


Kept Man: Series 1-3 (Shalka Redux)

by aralias



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Tag, M/M, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2011-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 10:44:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Scream of the Shalka, REG!Doctor (the ninth Doctor who almost was) was seen travelling round the universe with a robotic Master for no apparent reason. The ninth Doctor (who actually was) has a much better reason for travelling with a robotic Master, given that his entire race are dead. This fic assumes that he was and that the Master just kept out of sight so as not to alarm anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Series 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Section titles taken from 'Scream of the Shalka', by Paul Cornell

1\. _‘Loathe as I am to admit it, you offer him a companionship that I do not.’_

 _“Pathetic,”_ the Master says from the bed, as the Doctor throws himself onto the adjacent chaise longue. “Absolutely pathetic.” He looks up from the book he has been pretending to read for the last three hours. The Doctor is facing away from him in a pose of exaggerated casualness: maroon jumper contrasting pleasantly with the green upholstery. The Master smirks at his back. “I saw everything on the display so don’t bother to deny it.”

“Why would I?” the Doctor says. He picks up the dog-eared copy of _Oliver Twist_ resting on the night stand and opens it. “I asked her along. She said no. End of story. Case closed - I’ve read this bit already. Have you been moving my bookmarks around again?” He flicks back through the pages, shaking his head. “You have. Talk about pathetic.”

 _“See you round,”_ the Master says, mimicking the Doctor’s new accent with offensive inaccuracy and ignoring the comment about the bookmarks. They both understand that he needs to rebel in some way and, with the TARDIS programmed not to respond to him and his brain programmed not to respond to the TARDIS, his options are frustratingly limited. “No grovelling, begging or bribery.”

“Nope.”

“You just accepted it.”

“That’s right. I did. Will you stop going on about it?”

“My dear Doctor, in all the many years of our acquaintance, I have never once observed you accepting anything you didn’t like. Stubbornness to the point of stupidity has, thus far, been one of your most irritating and most consistent character traits. Forgive me if I’m surprised at your new rational outlook on life.”

“Things changes,” the Doctor says, darkly. He turns a page in _Oliver Twist_ , though it’s obvious he hasn’t read any of the words on the one before and says, “Bound to in nine hundred years.”

“Lying about your age, to someone who knows what it really is, is not sweet,” the Master points out. “It only makes you look senile. Ah,” he says, as if with realisation. “Is that it? Are you just too old and too tired to fight everything yourself? I wish you’d told me all I had to do was wait. I would have saved all my really good plans for your twilight years.”

“Sorry," the Doctor says. "Did you say _really good plans?_ What really good plans were those?”

“Hilarious as always, Doctor. Why you gave up your place at Clown College for a chance to become a Lord of Time I’ll never know.”

The Doctor laughs and the line of his shoulders relaxes. “All right, Master. I admit it. Every so often, when there’s nothing else for it, I have asked you to reconsider destroying the odd planet. Those were emergencies,” he says. “This isn’t. Anyway, I don’t need anyone else.” He turns around, grins, “I’ve got you,” and turns back.

“You haven’t _got_ me, Doctor,” the Master says witheringly. “You made a version of me and then programmed it not to leave you.”

“Same thing,” the Doctor says cheerfully. “Now, kindly shut up. I’m trying to read.”

“Of course. My apologies,” the Master says and returns to his own book, which is _The Count of Monte Cristo_. He’s not particularly fond of the novel, but the implied metaphor – lock me up unfairly and I will escape to wreak terrible and bloody revenge – is blatant enough that even the Doctor is sure to have picked up on it by now. He’s left the leather-bound volume lying open on the console and returned several hours later to find it in exactly the same place, which is a good sign. If the Doctor had really not noticed it, the book would have been found four days later inside a fridge.

The Master waits for the length of three pages and then looks sideways in time to catch the Doctor sneaking a glance at him over his shoulder. The Master smirks. “Unnerving, isn’t it? Don’t worry. I’m not really sorry. I was merely making a point.”

“I don’t get it. You really want me to go back and insist she travel with us? Why?”

Ignoring the phantom twinge in the hearts he no longer has at the Doctor’s ‘us’ - which includes the two of them and excludes everyone else - the Master says mildly, “She’s very easy on the eyes.”

"You're saying I’m not?” the Doctor says, feigning dismay rather poorly.

The Master gives him an amused glare. “You,” he says, “are not easy on anything.”

“You enjoy the challenge, though.”

“Oh, I do,” the Master assures him. “That is one of _my_ most irritating and most consistent character traits.”

He lets the Doctor hear that properly, sees the Doctor’s face soften and the slight raising of the Doctor’s body that suggests he’s thinking of moving from chaise longue to bed, and turns back to _The Count of Monte Cristo._

“Actually,” he says, without looking at the Doctor, “I don’t want her to travel with us, but it is painfully obvious that you do. Since it is equally obvious that I will never have any privacy unless you find someone else to talk to, I suggest you go back and try again with Miss Tyler or I will be forced to kill you before the week is up.”

 _“Really,”_ the Doctor says.

“Quite definitely,” the Master says. He puts the _Count_ back on the nightstand and gets gracefully off the bed. “Obviously,” he continues, “I’d be filled with remorse once the TARDIS powered down leaving me trapped forever inside its dead shell, but by then it would be too late for either of us. This leads to my second reason for encouraging you to take on a travelling companion, or my third if we count Miss Tyler’s physical attributes as a reason in their own right.”

He pushes the Doctor’s legs to one side and sits down on the chaise longue. There isn’t a lot of space and so he rests his arm on the Doctor’s hip, rather than leave it uncomfortably pressed between the two of them. “Are you ever going to let me accompany you on your world saving jaunts?”

The Doctor snorts. “No chance. You’d escape within minutes of landing.”

“I would certainly try," the Master agrees. "So, if that is the case, you will need someone else with you to stop you getting yourself killed. That isn't open for debate. I heard what she said out there: ‘You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me’. Correct?”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“Oh, I don’t,” the Master lies, sliding his upper hand beneath the Doctor’s jumper and over the delightfully bare skin beneath. For once, he doesn’t seem to favour layers of clothing which makes everything so much easier. “This is self preservation, Doctor. I’m not at all interested in spending an eternity alone inside your dilapidated ship. Miss Tyler seems like a capable young woman and you like her. Ask her again, but be more persuasive this time.”

“As if I’d let you anywhere near her,” the Doctor says, but he doesn’t pull away as the Master’s fingers brush over one of his nipples. As a reward, the Master leans into him and kisses him gently.

“You can always reprogram me so I _can’t_ go near her,” he murmurs, crawling forwards so the rest of his body traps the Doctor’s on the couch.

There must be a fault in his mechanical brain somewhere, accidental or deliberate. That or his new subconscious is trying to over-compensate for the last memory he has of proper existence, but the first seems more likely. The Doctor has claimed, more than once, that he has complete free-will, that the only blocks in his mind are physical ones that prevent him getting at the TARDIS, but the Master still suspects him of tampering with the affection circuits. In all those years of flesh and blood, he never once felt this stupid, selfless desire to make the Doctor happy at whatever cost. Keep him, yes, make him submit, of course, but not make him happy. Then again, in all those years of flesh and blood, when he could do whatever he wanted and go anywhere he wanted, he’d never managed to get this close to the Doctor, who was essentially the only thing worth wanting.

Now, the Doctor is so desperate and alone that he leans into the Master when they’re standing at the console together and now, here in his own bedroom, he wraps a large hand around the back of the Master’s neck and pulls him closer.

“I’m not going to do that to you,” the Doctor mutters, dark and intense, close to the Master’s face. “I’ll think of something else.”

The Master kisses him again, more fiercely this time because to say something that stupid is so typical of the Doctor. The Doctor tries to reciprocate, but it is obviously a distraction technique, so the Master draws away and smiles thinly. He says, “You can, of course, do whatever you like, but I need my space, Doctor, and I will have to kill you unless you find someone else to follow you around. Take this girl or another one. It’s really up to you.”

He stands up and retrieves _The Count of Monte Cristo._ “I’ll be in the library if you need me,” he says and starts for the door.

“It’s been hours,” the Doctor says, after his retreating figure. “She’s probably gone home by now.”

“You have a time machine,” the Master says without looking back.

In an hour, Rose Tyler is aboard the TARDIS. She laughs at the Doctor’s jokes as he shows her round the cloister room, the library, the laboratories. He grins and laughs with her. He is stupidly, obviously happy.

The Master watches their progress on a small portable monitor and hates himself.

 

2\. _‘I say I do not kill, but then I exterminate thousands.’_

The Doctor opens up the room that had first belonged to Adric, and afterwards to Turlough, for Adam: the latest in a line of precocious pretty-boys to travel with him. If he’s honest, he’d rather this one had stayed in Utah, but Rose seems pleased to have him on board. It must be nice to have someone of her own species around. Sometimes it must all get a bit “alien”. Understandable.

The Doctor leaves the two of them to talk about human things and goes to find the Master. It’s more difficult than it should be, because he can’t sense this version of the Master at all. He’s managed to reproduce the Master’s final body, his voice, his thought-patterns, but it would be impossible to replicate the background telepathic connection of their race. That’s why it wasn’t a lie when he told Rose he was the last of his kind less than half an hour ago, though she would probably see it that way. It was “the truth - from a certain point of view” as Ben Kenobi would’ve said. There is silence in the Doctor’s head. There’s no one left really, though the TARDIS helps. The Master helps. Rose helps. Adam - Adam may help. He’s been wrong about people before.

The Master - or the version of the Master he allowed himself to build after the loneliness grew too much - is working at a desk in the observatory, facing out over the simulated constellations. He looks exactly as he did during the Time War: short dark hair greying above the ears, wide shoulders, the same upright stance-

“It’s rude to stare,” the Master points out without turning around. “I distinctly remember your mother teaching you that, so please don’t try and protest otherwise.”

The Doctor grins, brief and rueful because he remembers downloading the Master’s memories into his electronic brain. He ambles over to the desk. “I brought you a present.”

“Yes, I’ve seen him,” the Master says. “Reasonably handsome, reasonably clever, more than reasonably obnoxious. He’s perhaps a little young for my tastes, but I dare say you did the best you could.”

“Hands off,” the Doctor says, sliding his own over the Master’s shoulder and squeezing gently. “He’s for Rose.”

“How indescribably disappointing.”

The Doctor presses a quick kiss to the Master’s hair which smells exactly like the Master’s hair always used to when not slicked back with Brill cream. “You’ll get over it.” With the hand not on the Master’s shoulder, he pulls a small, triangular instrument from his pocket and places it in on the desk. “This is for you.”

“… A Celestial Harp,” the Master says with poorly concealed surprise. He puts down the propelling pencil he has been working with and reaches for the tiny harp, withdraws his hand without touching it. He taps his lips thoughtfully. “Remind me where it was you went this time, Doctor.”

“Earth,” the Doctor says, retreating to one of the room’s armchairs and dropping into it. It’s been a rough day. The worst in a long time. “Utah, 2012. Massive underground alien museum.”

“And how did you acquire,” the Master indicates the harp, “ _this?_ Not from the Gift Shop, I assume.”

“How do you think?” the Doctor asks. “I stole it.” He crosses his arms over his chest, hugs himself. “They were just going to bury it in concrete. Are you going to play it or what?”

The Master turns to look at him and arches a thin, dark eyebrow. “Would you like me to?”

The Doctor nods once. “Yes. Will you?”

“Of course, if you wish it,” the Master says, which is presumably some sort of dig about his servitude. He picks up the harp and flexes his fingers over it experimentally. “That is assuming my mechanical hands are up to the challenge. The precision of a Time Lord body is unlikely to be equalled by wiring and skin grafts.”

“My wiring’s perfect,” the Doctor says.

“My dear Doctor, that is hardly the point,” the Master says and strokes a single note of almost unbearable sweetness from the instrument in his hand. He cuts it short and tsks. “It’s flat and by almost an eighth of a tone.”

“It’s _fine_ ,” the Doctor says, rolling his eyes. “And don’t say you’re out of practise either. Like it matters.”

The Master smirks and, after another false start, begins to play something very familiar. When he was alive he was an excellent player and death has barely dulled his performance. The sounds he coaxes from the Celestial Harp now are so different to those produced in Van Statten’s office as to be incomparable. The Doctor is shivering after the first chord of a song he remembers the Master playing for him nine hundred years ago. If he closes his eyes he can almost believe that he is young and blonde and sitting in their rooms at the Academy, trembling at the same notes.

“That distress call we were following,” he says suddenly, “turns out it was from a _Dalek_.” The Master’s fingers twitch and the song spasms briefly away from perfection. “One little Dalek,” the Doctor continues with some madness. “The last one in the universe. All on its own, locked up under ground, being tortured by idiots.”

The Master shakes his head wryly. “I suppose you tried to rescue it and reintroduce it back into society.”

“No,” the Doctor says wretchedly. “I tried to execute it – I didn’t– I couldn’t – Rose… _tried_ –”

He tells the rest of the story in short, jerky segments. The worst part is that he would have done it if Rose hadn’t stopped him. Would have done it without a thought. He’s killed so many Daleks now and hasn’t regretted it. Hasn’t regretted it at all. He’s regretted that moment of indecision outside the laboratory on Skaro though. He’s regretted that almost every day since the Time War. He’d wondered, then, if he had that right. Now he is the highest authority left in the universe. The Daleks have taken everything from him and he’s done wondering. Rose was right to stop him now he can’t stop himself. She’s right. He’s changing and not for the better. Soon he won’t recognise himself.

“So, the last Dalek in the universe is dead,” the Master says once the Doctor has lapsed back into miserable silence. The final notes slide from his fingers and fade away.

“Yes,” the Doctor says. “It’s dead.”

The Master nods. “Good.” He sets the harp gently back on the desk. “As it should be. Be sure to tell Miss Tyler, from me, that in future she should stay out things she cannot possibly appreciate.”

 _“Fantastic,”_ the Doctor says. “I should have realised there was no point- you know, why am I even talking to you?” He gets to his feet. It’s best he leave before he says something he will regret later.

“You told me for the same reason you created me in the first place,” the Master says lazily as the Doctor reaches the door. “Because there was no one else and you needed someone to validate you.”

“Go to hell,” the Doctor growls before he can stop himself and storms out. He regrets it later.

 

3\. _‘I am by no means fond of you.’_

The Doctor hasn’t changed in over a thousand years: he fights passive-aggressively if at all possible. There are no blazing rows, no blows – they only fence when they are pleased with each other – and the Master’s experiments are not even sabotaged during the night. The Doctor just stops visiting. He spends all his conscious time with Miss Tyler where the Master can’t reach him, and, if he sleeps, it is somewhere dusty that hasn’t been used for the last five hundred years. It is all so childish.

Only mildly vexed by the Doctor’s ridiculous, but predictable sentimentality over the Dalek, the Master becomes distinctly angry at being ignored, at being so dismissed, at the Doctor’s disgusting ingratitude. With active confrontation impossible, he is forced to creative reparations. He introduces a fast growing mould in all the bathrooms and saws through the legs on the beloved chaise longue. He finds the Doctor’s signed copy of _Mein Kampf_ and leaves it propped up against a toaster. He hides Miss Tyler’s shoes if she is foolish enough to leave them in the console room and leaves notes for her in the Doctor’s handwriting asking that she pick up a large tube of haemorrhoid ointment next time she ‘pops out to the chemist’. Finally, he stops concealing the signs of his own presence: gramophones are left playing in recently vacated rooms, fires left burning, a third toothbrush appears in the main bathroom which is now hopelessly mouldy.

The Doctor cracks after a week of this warfare and barges into their bedroom without warning. “Con _gratulations_. Rose thinks we’ve got a ghost.”

“Oh dear,” the Master says mildly. He keeps his expression infuriatingly neutral, which is no more than the coward deserves, and puts down his data pad. “That is unfortunate. Did you tell her it was the ghost of your psychopathic ex-lover, or did you insist all her problems were her own doing?”

“No. I bought her a lot of shoes and took her to see her dead father. Both were a mistake,” the Doctor says irritably and sits down on the chaise longue which promptly collapses under his weight.

The Master attempts a dignified chuckle, but it emerges as unrepentant, wicked laughter. The Doctor lobs one of the neatly sawn, ex-longue legs at his head with all the accuracy of a former cricketing enthusiast and the Master only just manages to duck in time.

“Bastard,” the Doctor says from the floor.

“Indeed,” the Master agrees. His lips are still twitching with barely suppressed sniggers. “Now, Doctor, is it too much to hope that you have finally finished this tedious sulking?”

The Doctor shrugs against the wall, one leg stretched out in front of him. “I dunno. Have you?”

“Are you planning to apologise?”

“Am _I_ planning to apologise?” the Doctor asks incredulously. “My bathrooms are ruined. _Rose_ thinks she’s gone crazy. This _sofa_ ,” he gestures at the remains of his chaise longue, “once belonged to Queen Victoria.”

The Master raises one elegant eyebrow. “Did it really? How fascinating.”

“All right,” the Doctor says seriously, “I’m sorry. I never should’ve told you to go to hell.”

And here they are once more: perpetually apologising for the wrong things. It’s possible the Doctor doesn’t even realise his error, so in return, the Master says, “And I, my dear Doctor, am sorry that a perfectly respectable piece of royal furniture had to suffer in your stead. It did not deserve its cruel fate.”

The Doctor huffs a short, disbelieving laugh and shakes his head. There is a long pause. The Master waits. The Doctor folds his arms.

Eventually, for no reason other than that he is bored with the silence, the Master says, “So, you took dear Miss Tyler to see her dead father. May I ask how that went? Well: I assume.”

The Doctor gives him a hard look, which twitches into a poorly disguised a grin. “I was eaten by a reaper and I don’t mean almost eaten, _actually_ eaten.”

He tells the rest of the embarrassing story without prompting. The Master smiles and makes snide comments at appropriate points, which the Doctor accepts with an amused tolerance. In a generous mood, the Master decides this means he must have learned his lesson. When the Doctor falls asleep on the floor – he must not have slept all week – the Master refrains from drawing a debonair beard on his face in indelible ink. He watches the Doctor sleep. Then he realises that this is what he’s doing and has to leave.

 

4\. ‘ _Perfect pitch – finally.’_

Glenn Miller’s greatest hits are playing throughout the TARDIS.

“Why don’t you just turn it off?” the Doctor mouths when he finds the Master wandering the corridors wearing large, bright green headphones which look, frankly, ridiculous with his Edwardian shirt sleeves.

“I assumed you had some reason for this assault on good taste,” the Master says, removing the headphones and wincing slightly at the final bars of _Chattanooga Choo Choo_ , “and that you might take my interfering with it as a slight. Do you?”

“What? Take you interfering as a slight?” the Doctor teases, pulling the Master into a loose approximation of the steps he has just danced with Rose in the console room as _In the Mood_ starts playing again.

“Have a reason,” the Master clarifies with a faintly amused smile.

“I do. We’re celebrating,” the Doctor says, grinning back. Despite his hatred of swing music, the Master has taken control of the dance, apparently without even noticing. “Everybody lived!” He laughs and says it again because it feels so good. “ _Everybody lived_ , even Jack.”

“And who is _Jack?”_

“New boy,” the Doctor says. “Captain Jack Harkness. You’d like him. Very handsome, very clever, kind of obnoxious, but -”

“- he’s for Rose,” the Master finishes with feigned weariness. “They always are. Sometimes I-” He grimaces suddenly and, without finishing his sentence, strides off down the coral lined corridor.

“Master?” the Doctor asks, following him. “Are you all,” the Master opens the first door they’ve passed and tugs him through it. “Right?” the Doctor finishes as the door shuts behind them. “Did you know this was a cupboard?”

“It temporarily slipped my mind,” the Master’s voice admits.

It is pitch black in the cupboard, although, if the Doctor remembers correctly, this particular cupboard is filled with towels in a variety of sizes and colours and so the loss of sight is not a great one. The big band music is playing in here as well.

“I had hoped this door would provide an escape route,” the Master explains. “One of your _companions_ is approaching. At such times, I usually try to make myself scarce before my programming kicks in.”

Sure enough, a moment later Jack’s voice rings out in the corridor outside, distant but coming closer: “Hey Doc, are you there? Rose told me I’d have to ask you where my room was… Hel _lo_? Hello, Doctor?”

“Ah - he’s,” the Master says shakily, “ _American._ Miss Tyler is quite, quite welcome to him.”

The Doctor takes a tentative step forward and reaches for the Master’s shoulders in the darkness. “You know, I could remove the inhibitor,” he offers as Jack turns his call into a song to the tune of _Little Brown Jug._

“Yes, you could,” the Master agrees, batting the Doctor’s hands away weakly. His voice is rapidly losing the rich timbre and intonation that mark it as his. “But imagine how awful you’d feel if you arrived home to find I’d murdered your precious humans in a fit of pique. It is usually fine,” the Master says, now almost like a early-computer rendering of himself: flat and monotone, “but we seem to be trapped here and if you don’t do something to distract me very soon, I’m afraid that I am going to pass out.” By _pass out_ , he means his brain will turn itself off, but they’re both more comfortable with the organic euphemism.

“Right. ‘ _Distract_ ’ you,” the Doctor says, forcing himself to sound wry, like this is a normal day, like this is normal banter before sex. “Even about to collapse, you’re incorrigible.”

He unbuttons the Master’s trousers and slides his hand into them, grabs the other man’s cock. His grip is purposefully rough and painful and the Master hisses, “I _meant_ tell me about your day,” through gritted teeth, sounding briefly like himself again.

“Oh? Did you?” the Doctor asks, as the Master’s cock hardens in his hand and the breath the Master doesn’t need breaks from him in short gasps. “That’s nice. Sorry, I misunderstood. Fantastic day. Really fantastic. I saved a lot of people, did some dancing-” he stops talking because it sounds like Jack is walking passed the door and the current situation would be difficult to explain if he decided to open the door.

“ _Master?_ ” the Doctor hisses when the immediate danger has passed. The Master has gone still and the little breathy noises are fewer and shallower. If the Master responds to his name at all, it is impossible to see the movement in the darkness. The Doctor curses under his breath. It doesn’t matter, really, if the Master switches himself off: the Doctor can easily switch him back on after Jack has gone, but it’s that sort of thinking which suggests this Master is not _the_ Master, just a copy the Doctor made to keep himself entertained.

The Doctor gives the Master a quick kiss and kneels, tugging the Master’s trousers down with him. He runs his hands up the Master’s thighs, lowers his head slowly because it’s very dark and it would be really embarrassing to poke himself in the eye. There’s no time for anything slow or technically brilliant, he merely slams his mouth down repeatedly, hands on the Master’s hips to steady himself. He lets his teeth scrape across sensitive almost-flesh and, at last, the Master gasps raggedly and his hands flutter uselessly over the Doctor’s head, trying to steady him.

“You should really,” the Master pants in his own voice, hips arching forward as he tries to dictate his own rhythm having abandoned his attempts to control the Doctor’s, “grow your hair.”

The Doctor grins around his cock and pushes him backwards, wishing for light because it would be wonderful to watch the Master quivering against the wall. He bobs his head once, twice, and swallows hard. The Master comes with a small choking noise: sharp and vaguely synthetic in the Doctor’s mouth, like artificial lemons. They’ll have to work on that. If the Master’s skin tastes like Time Lord skin there is no reason his come should taste like this, pleasant though it is.

“So,” the Doctor says, sitting back on his haunches, “As I was saying, I did some dancing, and then I sucked my lover off in a towel cupboard after he made some feeble excuse about forgetting the layout of the TARDIS. All in all, not bad.”

The Master laughs and drags him upwards by a leather lapel. “I assure you, I did forget.”

“Yer, right,” the Doctor says, and though Glenn Miller is still playing and, at first, they miss each others’ mouths awkwardly in the dark, it is briefly perfect.

 

5\. _'Doctor! You’re alive!'_

The Master works out what must have happened very quickly. Observation one: the Doctor and his companions have been abducted by an extremely powerful transmat beam. Observation two: the TARDIS’s external scanners show that it, too, has been transported across the universe to (observation three) Satellite Five, which now seems to be providing a multitude of television channels, the contestants for which are provided by (observation four) an extremely powerful transmat beam. Ergo, the Master deduces, the other occupants of the TARDIS are now trapped in a game show, or various game shows, for reasons unknown.

Fortunately, the TARDIS entertainment system is one of the few the Doctor allows him access to, because, apart from wiping the favourites list and signing them up for the Sontaran pornographic networks, there’s hardly anything the Master can do to abuse this privilege. Now, he keys in descriptions of the Doctor, Miss Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness and leaves the computer to search for them.

By the time he returns with a stack of reasonably interesting books, the TARDIS has found and displayed the Doctor in a game of Big Brother, and Captain Harkness being ogled by two shiny white robots. The Master smirks and presses record on both channels. Moments later, the screen divides into four and Miss Tyler appears in the section next to the captain, answering various embarrassingly simple questions erroneously. The Master saves this, too, for posterity.

Having located the Doctor and his human pets, he is at somewhat of a loss until the first disintegration occurs in Miss Tyler’s program. In other circumstances, this development might well have amused the Master, but the Doctor is stuck inside one of these shows and they have only just started making love again. It would be extremely upsetting if he got himself disintegrated now.

Leaving all three shows running, the Master pulls the recording of the Weakest Link into the fourth quarter of the screen and rewinds it. The ‘disintergrator’ beam is slightly too bright. He magnifies the image and re-watches it. When the black girl is ‘evicted’ he swaps the footage and examines that beam as well. It is quite definitely a transmat.

Unfortunately, tracing its source proves to be impossible with all the useful systems still locked against him. Keeping an eye on the television programs, the Master finds his place in _The Time Machine_ – the Doctor has such a parochial collection – and resigns himself to waiting.

The Doctor escapes within half an hour, which the Master observes with something that feels disgustingly like pride. He finishes _The Time Machine_ and is several hundred pages into the Felspoonian classic _Falling Upwards_ when the headache sets in. The headaches are the first warning, signalling the imminent arrival of a non-Time Lord, and almost unbearably painful. At times, it feels like he has the drums back so insistent is the pounding his head.

The Master leaves the screen displaying various close-ups of the transmat beam, and a genuine disintergrator beam from the TARDIS’s data banks, and retires to the library.

The Daleks take him completely by surprise.

Fortunately, the Master is deep inside the TARDIS whilst the Daleks are, for the moment, outside it, and so he doesn’t scream out loud. He screams inside his head though, backing away from the library’s main screen which is now displaying an enormous fleet of, maybe, two hundred battle craft. The image flicks to the inside of a Dalek ship which is swarming with the creatures. They are supposed to be _dead_ , the Master thinks desperately, the Doctor had _promised_ -

He shudders and stops himself, forces himself to return to the screen. Rose Tyler is apparently onboard the Dalek command ship, the Daleks are talking to someone, they grate out the Doctor’s name over and over, but the Master’s brain refuses to make connections for him. The fear is crippling.

The last true memory he has is of standing in this TARDIS’s console room, having already made the decision to run at the next opportunity. He remembers the Doctor – who still wore velvet then: soft and completely unsuited to the situation – refusing to go with him one last time. The Master had hardly cared at that point. He remembers that most clearly of all: how even the Doctor had seemed a minor consideration compared to the need to get away.

The highly illegal mental snapshot, on which his new brain is based, was taken at this meeting. Apparently, things got worse after the Dalek emperor seized control of the cruciform, but the Master doesn’t remember that. He assumes that was when he ran or was killed, or that the Doctor burned him along with the rest of Gallifrey, but he doesn’t remember. He only remembers the fear this new body was born into.

The screen goes blank and, moments later, TARDIS lurches into take off. Unfortunately, with the immediate danger gone, the Master regains full control of his deductive faculties. They are not running; they are going to rescue Miss Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet.

Abandoning dignity for a better time, he sprints to the console room, but the awful, thumping headache sets in before he has even reached the wardrobe gallery. His vision cuts out moments later and there is obviously no point going on.

Furious and trembling, the Master retreats back down the corridors. Gradually, the headache fades and his sight returns. He sinks to the ground next to an external display screen and watches the horrific situation develop into a nightmare.

The laughter starts as the Doctor turns to face the emperor of the Daleks. The sound is high and hysterical. The lungs the Master doesn’t have ache: the perfect simulacra of terror. They are all going to die, he thinks with astonishing clarity. First the Doctor, then the Doctor’s friends, and then the TARDIS and her final occupant. This is it. The Doctor has brought him back for this: the opportunity to be killed by the Daleks a second time and, this time, he can’t even run away. Through a combination of programming, fear, and the Doctor’s determination to keep him out of any event he might use to his advantage, he has been effectively rendered helpless. He has never felt less like himself.

With no access to the console room, the Master is unable to prevent the Doctor returning to Satellite Five. Using the entertainment systems, he manages to pipe a short snatch of nauseating human music into the console room, _‘if you need me, call me_ ’, but the Doctor shuts it off almost immediately and sets about building the Delta wave without him. The switch should be pushed by someone without an organic brain, someone who would wipe these Daleks out without a twinge of regret, but the Doctor doesn’t ask the Master to do it for him. He tricks stupid, trusting Rose Tyler into the TARDIS and leaves.

The Master realises what must be happening as soon as the Doctor begins spouting gibberish about crossing his own time line. This time, by concentrating on the figures of pi, he manages to push through the headache and the momentary blindness and is half way through the wardrobe gallery before his knees buckle and he collapses, still several feet from the top of the spiral staircase leading down to the console room. Through the drumming in his head, he can hear Miss Tyler’s realisation and her pathetic attempts to send them back to the Satellite. He hears the Doctor’s voice tell her about emergency program one and his plan for the TARDIS, and then another hologram of the Doctor flickers on in the wardrobe and sits down next to the Master.

The Master manages a weak sneer in the direction of the transparent image. “I suppose… you think that’s… very clever.”

“It is very clever,” the Doctor’s recorded voice says more quietly than the version of himself downstairs, “and you’re very predictable. Now, be quiet and listen. If this recording’s playing, I’m sending Rose home. Whatever I’m facing, I’m certain I won’t survive and I don’t want either of you involved. That means the TARDIS is yours now." The Master pushes himself to his feet as the hologram continues to talk. “When emergency program one activates, all the controls will be automatically taken off isomorphic, except the navigation circuits which _stay_ locked.”

The Doctor has always been terrible at goodbyes, but this is easily the worst so far. Were he here in person, rather than merely a holographic representation of himself, the Master would have punched him by now. As it is, the Doctor has robbed him even of that small satisfaction, has left him trapped in a crippled TARDIS, on his own forever, imagining it mercy. Anger rapidly replaces the fear.

“Can’t have you running about the universe without me looking over your shoulder,” the Doctor continues through the final whir of dematerialisation. “And I don’t want you coming back for me either, Master. I mean that.”

Miss Tyler runs out of the console room and, freed from the programming restrictions, the Master hurls himself down the spiral staircase. Above him, the Doctor’s voice says: “I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye in person.” The Master ignores it.

“ _I don’t want you coming back for me,_ ” he mutters furiously, flicking open the maintenance circuits which, as promised, answer to his touch as if to the Doctor’s own. It’s futile, of course. There are ways to bypass isomorphic restraints, but the Doctor knows them all as well, if not better, than the Master, and he must have locked everything up tightly before leaving to be so confident. Nonetheless, the Master tries all the tricks he knows, and improvises a few more. The TARDIS remains uncommunicative until he tries shut her down completely in the hope of restarting her in a more cooperative mood. At the final stage, rather than turning off, she sends a bolt of electricity strong enough to kill a living Time Lord up his arm to express her displeasure. Fortunately, the Master is not, technically, alive and so the shock merely fries the circuits in his right hand side.

Mumbling curses in several languages through the left of his mouth, he drags himself out of the console room and along the corridor towards the nearest robotics lab.

He has managed to replace the circuits in his face and upper body by the time the TARDIS takes off. The Master limps over to a display screen and brings up a view of the console room. Rose has opened the heart of the TARDIS and the entire vortex is now running through her head. The Master experiences a grudging flicker of respect at the action: bravery carried to a level of stupidity usually reached only by the Doctor. They chose well. It’s almost a shame that her mind will be ripped to shreds by the experience.

He allows her to save the Doctor and destroy the Daleks, and concentrates on replacing his own leg, only looking up when the Doctor carries Rose’s body back into the TARDIS. Half expecting to be locked out again now the immediate danger has passed, the Master activates the communication channels into the console room, coughs and says, “Doctor?” when everything seems still to be functioning. The Doctor pulls the screen round so that it is facing him. “Is it over?” the Master asks quietly.

“It’s over,” the Doctor says. “Rose saved us.”

The Master nods. “I know. She did very well… for a human.”

The Doctor grins and starts to say something about the majesty of the human spirit which is lost as his whole body spasms.

 _“Doctor?”_ the Master demands, before he can stop himself. “Doctor? Are you-” he scrabbles for his own screen, pulls it closer, and now he can see the gold of the vortex sparkling beneath the Doctor’s skin. “Oh, you _idiot,_ ” he hisses.

“It’s all right,” the Doctor says firmly.

“Is that so?” the Master asks sardonically. “Using what definition? My dear Doctor, surely even you have noticed that you’re regenerating.”

“Yes,” the Doctor says, “regenerating. Which is normal.” He gives another slightly pained grin. “Still - another one you’re not responsible for, Master, and just three more to go. You should be ashamed.” He glances to his right. “Looks like Rose is waking up. I’ll come and see you when it’s over. All right?” The Master nods wearily, and the Doctor closes the channel briefly before opening it again. “Oh, and Master? Stay out of this. I don’t want to be blonde again.”

“Ah, yes,” the Master says with a faint smile. “I was exceptionally fond of that regeneration.”

The Doctor rolls his eyes and closes the channel a second time.

Once his image has vanished, the Master wastes no time in hacking into one of the overhead camera feeds, reasoning that such an order is practically a dare. Despite his heavy involvement in the Doctor’s fourth regeneration, he has never actually witnessed one of them first hand, which seems, now, like a criminal oversight.

The event is remarkably similar to the Master’s memories of his own, though the orange flare is a touch ostentatious. He makes a note to mock the Doctor about it at a later date.

The new Doctor is young and stringy with a mad grin and longer hair, which appears to have come into being coated in a thick layer of gel. He talks very fast in another embarrassingly human accent. The Master watches him interacting with Rose for several minutes, learning him again, and then returns to his repair work: the Doctor’s new voice chattering comfortably in the background.

It’s not long, however, before the TARDIS lurches wildly, sending the Master’s tools skittering across the room. Clearly regeneration has not improved the Doctor’s driving. Indeed, if possible, it appears to have grown worse: the TARDIS actually seems to be crashing into solid objects. No wonder the man failed his driving test on so many occasions. The Master grasps the work bench firmly until the shuddering stops and the TARDIS touches down. He returns to the screen in time to see the Doctor stagger down the ramp towards the exit, giggling like a man insane.

He must have botched the regeneration process again, the Master realises with a mixture of amusement, exasperation and anxiety. That makes three failed attempts of which he is aware, and who knows how many others? More than the Doctor is willing to admit to, presumably. A brief spell in a zero room will undoubtedly smooth any rough edges, but the Doctor appears to have forgotten this and collapses almost immediately in the streets of London, leaving the bemused humans to carry him away from the only place he might conceivably get better.

Once again, the Master finds himself separated from the Doctor whilst the other man hovers between life and permanent demise, but without the threat of the Daleks also looming over him, he manages to remain calm. The Doctor will return or will be brought back soon. He simply has to wait until that happens. He locates the zero room he forced the Doctor to build a week before Rose’s arrival and ensures that it is functioning at full capacity. He finishes _Falling Upwards_ and its less than inspiring sequel, and swims eighty lengths of the TARDIS’s main pool.

By this point, well over twelve of Earth’s hours have passed and the Doctor has still not returned. Worried and bored, the Master flicks through Earth’s limited range of television channels and soon happens upon an urgent appeal from the prime minister.

The scanner reveals that the alien ship hanging over London is ludicrously primitive, so much so that, at first, the TARDIS has trouble distinguishing it from the most advanced technologies on Sol 3. It is actually broadly possible that the humans might be able to defeat their invaders without any external help, but it is inconceivable that the Doctor would not offer it. Unless he were seriously incapacitated.

The Master paces and, briefly, considers hacking into his own brain in an attempt to circumvent the programs which keep him from leaving the TARDIS, before he dismisses the idea as nonsensical and dangerous. Instead he returns to the zero room and carefully removes a grey-pink panel, the width of his hand, from one of the walls.

Reprogramming and adapting the panel takes longer than anticipated, but the Master has finished and has even attached a long chain to his creation creating a rather ugly pendant, by the time Rose and Mr Mickey Smith carry the Doctor back into the TARDIS. As soon as possible after they leave the Master pushes through the main doors into the console room.

The Doctor is completely still on the metal grating, looking vaguely ridiculous in blue dressing gown and pale, striped pyjamas. The Master strides past a thermos of tea which is dripping steadily into the TARDIS’s core and over to his side. He raises the Doctor’s head gently and slips the chain around his neck. It takes a moment, but then the Doctor’s eyes flare open, hazel this regeneration. He grins and they crinkle round the edges. The Master lets go a ragged sigh of relief and stands up.

“Hello,” the Doctor says cheerfully from the floor.

“Hello,” the Master returns, hearing his own voice shake slightly. “How nice of you to finally put in an appearance.” He offers the Doctor his hand and the other man hoists himself upright. The device around his neck bounces against his chest with the sudden motion, and the Doctor raises it to eye level with interest.

“You… reversed the polarity of the zero field,” he announces after a momentary inspection, “so that it reflects outwards rather inwards. Oh, that’s very good.”

“Rather better than the cabinet you built from the original doors,” the Master points out with a tinge of smugness.

“Now,” the Doctor says, “there was nothing wrong with my cabinet. And,” he adds, pointing a finger at the Master, “I wouldn’t have had to build it in the first place if you hadn’t tried to kill me.” He looks around, taking in the empty console room, the spilt tea, the external screen which shows Rose and the other humans cowering in the alien ship. “Right. Time to save the world. I don’t know, leave it alone for a day while you take a nap and it just needs saving again.”

“Dressed as you are?” the Master asks, raising one elegant eyebrow.

The Doctor shrugs. “Bit early for nudity,” he says, hooking the zero room device beneath his pyjama top. He winks lewdly. “We’ll save that for later.

“Hey,” he says when the Master rolls his eyes, and starts to leaves. The Master turns back to look at him. “Thank you,” the Doctor says seriously.

The Master nods curtly and lets himself out of the console room. As he does so he hears the Doctor say "did you miss me?” and smiles.


	2. Christmas special

_5.5 'And I wandered around'_

Jackie is not at all keen to let them leave. In fact, she flat-out refuses, and, since it’s Christmas, the Doctor relents and lets her keep her daughter - at least till Boxing Day. In return, he’s furnished with some rather dodgy sherry and another paper hat and Jackie’s seat on the sofa. He drinks the sherry, wears the hat and watches _It’s a Wonderful Life_ with Rose and Mickey until Rose falls asleep and starts snoring softly. After a brief argument – well, brief debate really, Mickey carries her to bed: the Doctor hovering in the doorway to ensure they don't fall and die.

“So,” he begins awkwardly, when Mickey returns (Jackie went to sleep hours ago), “things are looking bad for Jimmy-”

“Do you want the spare bed?” Mickey asks, cutting him off mid-synopsis.

“No,” the Doctor says, grateful that they aren’t going to have to make small talk together until the film finishes. He switches off the television (George Bailey is punched in the face by the teacher’s husband), as Mickey makes a token protest to the effect that he lives a few streets away and can easily go home. The Doctor points out that his own home is parked just outside the main door and that he’s left his nice new pyjamas there and that, anyway, he only woke up a couple of hours ago and isn’t tired yet. Mickey nods and the Doctor slips away gratefully to the TARDIS.

The Master is still awake, of course. He seems to have taken his new access to the TARDIS systems as an open invitation to rip out all the navigational circuitry. Small pieces - and other, not quite as small pieces; other _quite vital pieces_ \- are laid out in an orderly grid across the decking. The Doctor just about manages to suppress the urge to scream and jam the components back into their probable positions quickly before the TARDIS realises what’s happened to her. This done, he plonks the remains of Jackie’s tree in a space next to the Master, who is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the arrangement.

“Present for you: the Christmas tree that tried to kill me. Technology’s a bit primitive, but I thought the story added a certain _je ne sais quoi._ ”

The Master spares a glance in the tree’s direction, and returns to polishing the transdimensional… blue… thing in his hands. “Thank you, Doctor. I'm sure I shall treasure it.”

“Hmm,” the Doctor smiles, rubs one of his eyes. “Not up to my usual standards, but everywhere was shut and Jackie didn’t have any Celestial Harps lying around. Mind you… she seems to have everything else. Things, everywhere - I spotted a Babylonian third eyebrow tweezer on way to the bathroom. Jackie told me it was African Art and tried to give it to me as a gift. Fortunately, she’d already given me an enormous jumper so I was able to refuse. Not sure what I would have done with it if she'd insisted... Put it with the others I suppose."

“I take it you had a good Christmas,” the Master says.

“Fantastic Christmas,” the Doctor says. The word has already begun to feel like a hand-me-down that doesn’t fit properly, like Jackie’s jumper which was clearly bought for his ninth body. Without really thinking about it, he amends his assessment to, “Brilliant Christmas. And it’s not over yet. I’m off out again to collect any big bits of the Sycorax ship lying around. Just came back to the TARDIS for my tech-detector.”

“Right,” the Master says without much interest.

“You could,” the Doctor says slowly, “come with me. If you want.” The Master looks up at him, and the Doctor shrugs - with his face as well as his shoulders: that’s new. “Could be fun.”

The Master gives him a particularly sardonic look. “Traipsing through the worst parts of twenty-first century London in the cold, looking for the mangled pieces of a Mark 5 space station, with you?”

“Like I said,” the Doctor says, “fun. _Go on,_ ” he adds with a grin. “You know you want to.”

The Master puts down the part of the TARDIS he has been fiddling with. “Is this your embarrassing idea of a Christmas gift? The sweet taste of freedom after a year locked inside this death trap.”

“No,” the Doctor says. “Definitely not. I just need someone to help me carry the junk. Sorry,” he says when the Master raises an amused eyebrow, “sorry, did I say carry the junk? I meant, keep me company and point out my elementary mistakes.”

With a smile, the Master asks, “You’re not worried that I’ll escape and wipe out a tenth of the population before you can recapture me?”

“Nah,” the Doctor says. “As you pointed out - it’s Christmas,” he checks his watch, “for the next six minutes anyway, the time when even the Scroogiest of men are filled with fellow feeling.”

“ _Scroogiest,_ ” the Master repeats.

“It’s a word,” the Doctor says, “...that I just made up. Coming?”

“Very well. The TARDIS should be safe in this condition for three or four hours.” The Master stands, steps over piles of important TARDIS components and heads for the spiral staircase leading up to the wardrobe. “I will attempt to locate some outer garments that are only moderately ridiculous in your wardrobe whilst you look for your device.”

“Brilliant,” the Doctor says, with what feels distinctly like a beam, and goes off to find the tech-detector. Or _a_ tech detector: the TARDIS is stuffed with gadgets and gizmos with some sort of detecting function. It’s usually more fun to ask, of course, but the whole of London is on red alert after the Sycorax invasion (attempted). Better to mop up quietly than have to fight some sixteen year over his right to the rear combustion engine of an alien spaceship. He locates a detector that seems to be working in one of the piles of broken appliances, starts it going with a sharp smack on the doorframe, and jogs back to the console room.

“I believe these gloves were originally mine,” the Master says, holding up a leather-gloved hand for inspection as the Doctor re-enters. The gloves of questionable origin are beneath the sleeves of a black frock coat which definitely belonged to the Doctor in his first incarnation. “There’s a small burn mark in between the thumb and index finger on the right hand that I recognise,” the Master continues, with the hint of a smirk. “Surely you haven’t been stealing my possessions all these years, Doctor? It would be galling to learn that every time I have been unable to locate a sock or a belt over the centuries, I could have looked in your TARDIS and located the missing item immediately.”

“If I remember rightly, you left those gloves here three hundred years ago after storming out in a huff,” the Doctor says with a grin, traversing the room and its maze of components slowly, hands in pockets. "And I'm fairly certain I've never, and will never be sad enough to steal your belts. Though if we're going to talk about missing trouser-suspending devices, what exactly happened to my question mark braces?”

“They’re looped round the horns of a Viking helmet in the third row of the wardrobe,” the Master says smoothly.

“Are they?” the Doctor asks, frowning. “I could have sworn- You know, I was looking for them earlier. These trousers-”

“Are in no danger of falling down,” the Master says. “Now, my dear Doctor, I understand that it will undoubtedly be a distressing experience for you, but you are going to have to switch me off and circumvent my programming if we’re to leave the TARDIS. Would you please do so before I overheat?”

The Doctor removes his right hand from its pocket, and, with the hand, the remote which controls the Master’s most basic functions: on, off. He hasn't used it yet, but it should work.

“All right?” he asks: a pathetically transparent delay.

 _“Yes,”_ the Master says impatiently.

“OK,” the Doctor says. “You’ll only be off for a minute. Maximum, one minute, I promise.” He depresses the remote’s only button. The Master’s expression freezes for the briefest of moments, features unnaturally still, and then the whole front of his face swings open revealing blinking LEDs and silver circuits above the un-masked hole of the Master’s throat: his tongue lolling on the base of his mouth.

The Doctor makes his modifications as quickly as possible – a simple six hour dampener should do the trick – taking care to touch only what is obviously machinery, and closes the Master’s face again. The Master undoubtedly intended to mock when he claimed that this would be upsetting for the Doctor, when he, the Master, would be the one switched on and off like a toaster or a television set, but it is upsetting. Really, very upsetting. The Doctor feels physically and mentally sick at seeing his lover exposed like this, even with the man’s consent.

He reactivates the Master, sees him blink and his lips twitch back into the impatient curve theyd worn before the deactivation, and kisses him with relief. He kisses differently this regeneration, but the Master still tastes like the Master: that’s another relief. The Master’s hair feels the same beneath the Doctor’s hands. It’s brilliant. Which is a good word, now he thinks about it. A brilliant word.

“Right. Brilliant,” the Doctor says, breaking away and grinning like crazy. “Let’s go get us some genuine alien junk.”

“Exactly what we need,” the Master says dryly.

The Doctor laughs and drags the Master into the snow that isn’t snow, and out of the TARDIS.


	3. Series 2

6\. _‘Tell me honestly: am I irritating you yet?’_

“You’ll never guess,” the Doctor says, laughing, “who’s a werewolf.”

“Remus Lupin,” the Master answers, without a discernable trace of irony.

 _“Queen Victoria,”_ the Doctor says. He drags another folding chair across the corridor floor and opens it next to the Master’s. “ _Queen_ Victoria. Well, I say she’s a werewolf, she’s not a werewolf yet — more the carrier of an alien virus which will eventually mutate in her cells and the cells of her descendants until they all become sort of fangy at the full moon. Fangi _er_ , as Rose pointed out, in the case of Princess Anne. You know, you’ve connected the earth wire to the wrong terminal there.”

The Master turns to look at him for the first time this interview. He has taken to wearing black, wire-rimmed spectacles, insisting that he needs them to see just as much as the Doctor needs his new square specs. It’s presumably supposed to be an annoyance, meant to humiliate the Doctor into owning up to the redundancy of his own, but the Doctor is almost - _charmed_ by the Master imitating him. Additionally, he finds that the glasses give the Master a scholarly appearance, rather than a despotic one, and, in general, they suit his current face. All in all, the look is definitely an improvement and one he should have adopted centuries ago. Worst annoyance tactic yet. The Master is clearly losing his touch. Now he peers over the top of the glasses in question and raises an eyebrow.

“Just - _there_ ,” the Doctor says, pointing back, past the Master to the incorrectly wired mainframe. He’s much better at being annoying than the Master and is well aware of it. “There,” he says again, when the Master gives him a hard stare that has, in other incarnations, cowed the populations of warrior planets. He gives the Master an encouraging smile.

The Master turns back, pulls his chair closer to the wall, away from the Doctor and examines his work. “Ah yes,” he says and pulls the offending wire neatly from the computer. “Though it occurs to me, Doctor, that I have yet to touch this area, and that the mistake must, therefore, be an old one of yours.”

“Is it?” the Doctor says. “Well, nobody’s perfect. Nice of you to fix it for me. Where was I?”

“Queen Victoria is a werewolf,” the Master prompts.

“As is Remus Lupin,” the Doctor agrees. “One rather more than the other, but both a bit wolfier than the acknowledged average.”

“Fascinating,” the Master says.

The Doctor nods. “Yup.”

He lapses into silence and watches the Master work, considers licking the Master’s ear and decides against it on the grounds that it might not be appreciated at such a delicate stage in the repair work.

Though it has been almost a week since the Doctor’s regeneration, they still haven’t actually had sex yet. Initially, the Doctor had felt, rather sensibly, that he probably ought to wait until his personality had stabilised before engaging in any intimate activities that might imprint the Master onto him more firmly than — well, more firmly than he already had done. Astonishingly, the Master had agreed and had sent him off to Christmas dinner at the Tylers’ with nothing more than a light kiss to his forehead.

Now, the Doctor knows who he is. In fact, he has known who he was since New Earth when he’d returned happy, and eager to be admired, and potentially sucked off, by the one person who could properly appreciate exactly how brilliant he’d been.

He’d related absolutely everything that had gone on in the Cat Nun hospital to the Master, whilst the Master pretended to be deeply interested in the inner workings of an electron microscope, and then cheerfully allowed himself to be dragged into his second violent snog of the day.

He was busy pulling the Master’s shirt out of his trousers, when the Master drew away and politely enquired why exactly it was that the inside of his mouth tasted faintly of human saliva.

“Like I told you,” the Doctor explained, “Rose - well Cassandra pretending to be Rose, grabbed me and stuck her tongue down my throat. Surprised it’s still hanging around. Your taste buds must be amazing — which isn’t surprising, really, I mean, I built them, but your memory seems to be on the blink and I built that, so-”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, come _on,”_ the Doctor said. “I told you about Cassandra and Rose and the snog. Can’t have been… what? More than five minutes ago and you-” he paused: the truth now horribly clear. “Oh. You weren’t listening, were you? I thought you were just having me on, but you were actually blocking me out.”

“I believe I caught most of the salient details,” the Master said impatiently. “Cat nuns breeding a race of humans to experiment on. You released the diseased clones and then cured them all using a concoction of intervenes fluids transmitted by touch. Am I incorrect?”

“But you weren’t actually…. _Listening,”_ the Doctor persisted. “No, tell me.”

The Master sighed and leant back against the wall behind him. “My dear Doctor, your new regeneration does have a tendency to over explain things. I assumed you would get to the point eventually.”

“Right,” the Doctor had said, “no, right, of course,” and left.

They are not arguing now because he finds that he is not angry. He’s confused and worried that the Master may, finally, have a point. The silent fear he experiences with every regeneration — what if my companions don’t like me any more? — has proved itself a justifiable fear this time. Twice.

Fortunately, Rose has now been persuaded that he’s the same, but different, good different as well as bad different, and that’s OK now. But the Master — the one person in the whole universe whom the Doctor feels he ought to be able to rely on to fascinate and to be fascinated in turn — is actually, is actually _bored_ by him.

It’s probably the stupid telepathic field, lack of, the Doctor reflects bitterly as he watches his lover (ex-lover?) twist together two live wires without getting electrocuted. The Master can’t feel him, has no connection with him - _this_ him. Of course, the same was true of his last self, but he’d been the one to build this Master and that must have imprinted onto him somehow. Git.

It’s fine when he’s out with Rose, but back in the TARDIS, which is supposed to be his home, the Doctor feels ill at ease in a body that, he knows, isn’t meant to be gloomy.

“You’re very quiet today, Doctor,” the Master says eventually.

“Am I?” the Doctor says. “Sorry. I was just thinking.” He shakes his head, sighs. “They’re not going to let Victoria teach Defence Against the Dark Arts now.”

“Fortunate, then, that she already has a full time occupation.”

The Doctor grins faintly. He gestures back at the open roundel. “You’d better close that up before something explodes.”

There is another brief, uncomfortable pause and then the Master says, _“Novice Hame.”_

“… What about her?” the Doctor asks. He looks around in case the cat-woman has appeared suddenly in the corridor, but, as this would be completely impossible, he is not surprised to find out that she hasn’t.

“Novice Hame,” the Master repeats, closing the roundel and dusting off his hands, “was looking after the Face of Boe in ward twenty six. Also present, besides the sisterhood, who, as a rule, refused to speak to you, were the Duke of Manhattan: a large gentleman in a gold and black brocade coat, suffering petrofold regression; the Duke of Manhattan’s aide, a thin and, as I understand it, unpleasant woman in thick glasses-””

“No. Hang on a minute,” the Doctor says.

“-a small, quiet girl named Jeena with the so called ‘Blacker Death’,” the Master continues, “Jeena’s three brothers, Bill, Tony and Wayland; an unconscious Crimsol with Marconies disease; an albino known as Fred Three, who told you an amusing joke about a water rat while he was recovering from Paladrome Pancrosis-”

“Yes,” the Doctor says. “That’s very-” he switches to the more important conversational track, “are you saying, sorry, just want to be clear, that you were listening to me all along and this was a — what? A joke?”

“I would probably label it a tiny revenge for the events of Satellite Five,” the Master says thoughtfully. He takes off his glasses and folds them into the pocket of his waistcoat. “Not one of my most inventive schemes, perhaps, but surprising effective, wouldn’t you agree, Doctor?”

The Doctor stares at him until the Master starts chuckling, at which point he can take it no longer: stands, paces, whirls back. “You _bastard,”_ he says. “You evil, _evil_ — You know, I’ve been suffering a minor existential crisis over this?”

The Master grins: wide and self-satisfied. “I know.”

“God, you’re irritating,” the Doctor says with relief. He falls back against the wall, massages his temples with a hand.

“As, my dear Doctor,” the Master says, standing and folding up his chair, “are you.”

The Doctor lowers the hand, and quirks his head with a smile. “No change there, then. A-a-h, no” he says, as the Master attempts to pass him. He sticks out an arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“You materialised a hundred years earlier than you intended. I assumed-”

“Sex,” the Doctor says. “ _Now_ ,” he adds, when the Master gives him a quizzical look.

“Here?” the Master enquires.

The Doctor considers this, briefly. “Bedroom,” he decides. “I know these walls. These walls hurt.”

The Master smiles and props his chair back up against the wall. “Very well.”

“So,” the Doctor says, after they’ve walked a little way in companionable silence, “Queen Victoria’s a werewolf, but she not the first of the werewolves. Just the first of her line. There actually _was_ a werewolf, though. A real live werewolf. Seven, maybe eight foot tall. Absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous. Oh, you should have seen it…”

  
7\. _‘As always you are at least two things at once’_

That the Doctor chooses to say nothing about his most recent excursion is highly suspicious. There are very few reasons he might have chosen this course of actions and all of them are too interesting to ask the Doctor about out right. So, the Master enquires about other matters — how Mickey Smith is settling down, and whether the Doctor has fixed the heating in the third floor billiard room yet — and pretends not to notice the expression of absolute misery which appears on the Doctor’s face five times during the first hour they spend together that evening.

They make love slowly that night. The Doctor gasps and whimpers his appreciation and leaves pleased smile impressions on the Master’s arms with his nails. But the Master has spent all his lives watching the Doctor. So, he knows that, although the Doctor is certainly enjoying himself, there is something else very definitely on his mind.

Afterwards, he accepts one of the Doctor’s traditional post-coital Jelly Babies and lets him turn on _The Three Musketeers_ — the 2169 version, fortunately: anything else would have to be interpreted as slight. After thirty minutes of ridiculous hats and swashbuckling, the Doctor has cheered up to the extent that he is quoting all D’Artagnon’s lines a beat before the man can say them himself. Over the last year, the Master has had several friendly arguments with his partner about the purpose of watching a film if the Doctor insists on ruining it in this fashion. When he excuses himself half way through, he does so - confident that this will not, in any way, be deemed unusual.

Down in the study he has, finally, begun to think of as his, he backtracks through the security footage until he reaches Rose and Mr Smith at the beginning of their TARDIS tour: console room, wardrobe gallery, kitchens, fencing hall. The young man does his best, nodding with interest and asking leading questions when Rose waves vaguely at a room, giving its name and little else, but it is still a painfully stilted experience.

In the last year, the Master has spent considerable time watching Rose Tyler — who is, so often with the Doctor — and there is something wrong with her as well. Just as he expected. Unfortunately, there is no way to judge at what point in the tour the clue to the Doctor’s behaviour will emerge. So the Master pulls his dressing gown more closely around himself and settles down to wait.

He likes Rose far less now, than he did before the Doctor’s most recent regeneration. As is perhaps only natural, the very event that gained his respect has turned her from an attractive toy into a potential threat.

She doesn’t even remember feeling the turn of the world and the past and future and the Doctor’s very thoughts thrum inside her mind, but the Doctor does. With this new regeneration, he’s picked up her accent and several of her gestures. In return, Rose — who used to make eyes at that dreadful Adam Mitchell, or at the Doctor _and_ Captain Harkness _and_ Mickey Smith whilst all three were in the same room — now, looks only at the Doctor’s new smile. She quite definitely resented the arrival of Mr Smith the night before, and seems scarcely to be aware of his presence now. That is worrying.

It may well be time to get rid of her, the Master reflects as he watches the increasingly tedious footage. Then again, the Doctor does need a companion and — short of arranging a tragic accident for the humans inside the TARDIS or suggesting to the Doctor that he abandon them somewhere — there’s little he can do to arrange their departure. Besides, the Doctor has clearly done _something_ to upset her today, and that may well have put a dampener on their joyful frolicking.

Impatiently, the Master fast forwards through the video until it looks like the tour has paused in favour of a discussion. He rewinds again, and plays from the humans’ entrance in the hall of mirrors.

The hall is an incredibly vulgar room: one the Master has appealed to the Doctor to dispose of, on numerous occasions. Perhaps it is the sight of herself with enormous thighs that proves the final straw, but Rose begins to talk almost as soon as she steps into the amusement arcade. Suddenly, poor Mickey Smith is subjected to a series of questions about the Doctor to which he cannot possibly know the answers: ‘what was he thinking?’, ‘is it just me or was that window broken? Properly broken’, ‘well, how did he get back?’, ‘and did you hear the way she talked about him?’, ‘yer, but why would he, though?’

“Spying on me, Master?” the Doctor says quietly, from the doorway behind him.

The Master turns in his rotating chair, well aware that, in other circumstances, the Doctor would find the James Bond villain allusion almost unbearably amusing. Now, though, he doesn’t laugh, just leans against the doorframe. He is beautiful today in dark pyjama bottoms that are too big for him; his hair sex-mussed and flattened on one side; a mildly curious expression covering up whatever it is that he is really feeling at the moment. Beautiful, and utterly infuriating.

“On Rose, but on you, by extension, yes,” the Master says and smiles thinly. “As always.” If the Doctor is attempting to claim the higher ground he will be greatly disappointed. ‘Spying’ is, and has always been, the most practical way of getting information about the Doctor’s life. His own accounts of his misadventures are, typically, interesting and amusing, but so is a great deal of fiction.

“I understand,” the Master continues, keeping his voice pleasant, “that you tried to leave me today.”

“Yer,” the Doctor says. “As always,” he adds with small smile of his own. “No, I was a trying to save someone,” he explains, pushing himself away from the doorframe and into an ambling walk over to the desk and the screen, which is still displaying Rose and Mickey, reflected in their distress in the hall of mirrors. The Master turns the chair round to follow him. There is a flicker in his expression as he acknowledges the scene and then the Doctor turns the main power switch to off. “As always,” he adds, rather redundantly, as the image fades.

“Did you?”

“No,” the Doctor says, still looking at the blank screen. “She died. I saved her, kept saving her. But she still died in the end.”

He turns and seats himself on the edge of the desk, hands either side of him: gripping the desk’s edge. The Master regards him silently.

“So,” the Doctor says, “what is it you want to know?”

It is tempting to lie and claim no further interest in the matter, let the Doctor imagine himself less important than he is. But it’s possible that the information will never be dropped casually into conversation anywhere on the ship. The Master raises his chin, as if there is a sword to his neck. “Who was she?”

The Doctor sighs. “Reinette Poisson,” he says, clearly taking some pleasure in the French syllables, even as they remind him of his failure to save their owner.

 _“Madame de Pompadour,”_ the Master says, not quite managing to keep the sneer out of his voice. “Well, Doctor, I congratulate you. Yet again, you’ve managed to find someone my absolute opposite to run off with.”

“That’s _attempt_ to run off with, if anything, surely,” the Doctor says. “Besides,” he wrinkles his nose, “what do you mean, she’s nothing like you?”

“Though it’s hardly the most important point,” the Master hisses, “I should have thought the differences were obvious. One: young, blonde, voluptuous, French-”

“-charming, ruthless, intelligent, predatory, ambitious,” the Doctor adds, pushing himself off the desk and sliding onto the Master’s lap, “ _very_ accomplished. Yer, you’re nothing alike.”

“Am I supposed to be flattered by this comparison?”

“Yes,” the Doctor grimaces comically, “aren’t you? I would be. Have you seen her gardens? They’re stunning. And. Yet,” he continues, stabbing the Master’s chest with a bony finger, “I didn’t _run off_ with her. Or even _attempt_ to run off with her, thanks for that. I dropped in, briefly, to stop a gang of clockwork droids chopping her head off. Then came back here for tea, sex and musketeers. Not sex with musketeers,” the finger against the Master’s chest becomes a hand that runs down between the folds of his dressing gown, “although I have-”

 _“Rose,”_ the Master says, stopping the hand before it passes his naval, “seemed to think it very likely that you broke the link with the ship permanently, when you — what was it?”

“Rode a horse through the relevant time window,” the Doctor says.

“A horse.”

“Mm,” the Doctor nods. “And she’s right. I did break it. The window, not the horse. But,” he says, trying to work his fingers free, “fortunately, I had a plan.”

“ _Did_ you?” the Master asks poisonously.

“’Course I did,” the Doctor scoffs. “What do you think I am, an idiot? There were windows all over the ship. Before I broke the link, I popped into one, about two years earlier, and left myself a vortex manipulator buried in the grounds. Actually,” his eyes flick to a point just to the left of the Master’s head, “I should probably go and get that back at some point. Can’t have some gardener digging a hole for a rhododendron bush, then, whoops, history altered forever.” He looks back at the Master, raises his eyebrows: half- mocking, half-appealing. “All right?”

It is sickeningly plausible. That probably means it isn’t true, but the Master nods, slowly, anyway. _All right._

When the Doctor dips his head, the Master consents to the kiss and the story. He is the one to open his mouth, the one to lean into the kiss. One of the Doctor’s hands wraps around his neck, the other pulls open the tie of the Master’s robe. The Master slides his own hands beneath the waistband of the Doctor’s pyjama bottoms, over the thin curves of his arse.

“Mm,” the Doctor says, breaking away suddenly, his lips already beginning to bruise. “I forgot. Something else you’ve got in common. Reinette was an excellent kisser.”

“Rassilon, you’re incorrigible,” the Master growls and, hoisting the Doctor up, dumps him unceremoniously on the desk, pulls his trousers free and proceeds to fuck him until he’s quite sure he has the Doctor’s undivided attention.

  
8. _'In time I hope you'll allow me my eccentricities.'_

“Where do you go when you’re not here?” Rose asks one evening.

“What do you mean, when I’m not here?” the Doctor asks, though he knows what she means. He holds out the red and blue dice. “You know where I go: you’re with me most of the time. Speaking of goes, it’s your go.”

“ _My_ go,” Mickey says firmly. “It’s been three hours and I’m always after you. _Me_ , not Rose.”

“Right. Yes. Sorry, course you are.” The Doctor hands over the dice with a wide smile which he knows will irritate the guy further. There’s a bit of him that knows baiting Mickey is unnecessarily cruel. Really he should just sit Mickey down and point out that he’s not, has never, and will — probably — never sleep with his sort-of-girlfriend. But it’s character building. And more fun. Okay, it’s _possible_ , the Doctor thinks, that he may be spending too much time with the Master, but really-

“Park Lane!” he exclaims as Mickey’s nickel car — he refused to take the dog for some reason, though Rose insists it used to be his favourite — is shunted reluctantly onto one of Doctor’s three remaining (un-mortgaged) properties. “That’ll be thirty five of your English pounds, Mr Smith, thank _you_ very much.”

“Use it to hire yourself a lawyer,” Mickey says. “You’re gonna need one when I bankrupt your skinny arse.”

The Doctor stares at him. “What was that? Monopoly _smack talk?”_

“Yer,” Mickey says. He looks uncertainly at Rose. “What, don’t we do that in space?”

“Do we do that anywhere?” the Doctor asks.

“He’s just being annoying,” Rose tells Mickey, moving her top hat on three spaces, as the Doctor grins. She lowers her voice, “It’s an incurable Time Lord disease,” and pats the Doctor’s arm. “Best just to ignore it. Now,” she says to him, “are you going to roll or what?”

Grinning, the Doctor takes the dice off her. It’s nice to spend the evening doing something so pleasantly mundane. Most evenings he spends with the Master and they don't play board games because a) the Master’s very good at them all, b) the Master’s very, very good at them all, 3) no, really, far too good, it’s dangerous and, frankly, embarrassing, and d) they can usually think of better things to do with the evenings. Not that the Doctor can’t think of better things to do with Rose and Mickey, but it’s nice to take time off from that.

Unfortunately, it turns out that both Rose and Mickey are also very, very, no, really, far too good at Monopoly. Apparently they spent their shared childhood playing the only two games Jackie owned: Monopoly and something called Go For Broke which Rose assures the Doctor is the dullest game in the universe, yes, Doctor, even duller than Motolvian Fiddlesticks.

Another twenty minutes of increasingly bad financial decisions and the Doctor flicks his final property card at Mickey’s head. “Right, that’s it. I’m out.”

Mickey whoops in triumph. “Ah ha ha, not so cocky now, are you?”

“Yer, yer,” the Doctor says, with reasonably good grace.

He stands and is about to sidle off, when Rose says, “There you go, you’re doing it again.”

“…Doing what?” the Doctor asks, with false innocence.

Rose twists in her chair, tilts her head. _“Sneaking off,”_ she says dramatically, to show it’s not a big deal, that she’s not keeping tabs on him, but still — she’s noticed. “You never used to, so I wondered.”

Quickly, quickly, and without moving any part of his face, the Doctor tries to work out whether he's been spending even more time with the Master than usual, recently, and concludes that he must have been. The Master is - though he pretends otherwise - still upset about the business with 18th century France, and the Doctor is still feeling guilty about the series of lies he was forced to tell to cover up that reckless decision. Not even a decision, really. Reinette needed saving, there was a way to save her and the Doctor saved her. He didn’t think. If he had — well, he would still have done it, but he would, _definitely_ , have buried that vortex manipulator.

“Oh,” the Doctor says, having worked this out in the time it takes to blink. “Yes. No, well, I just thought I’d get some work done on the TARDIS, now you’ve got Mickey here. Mickey, who is… about to land on Leicester Square. That’s yours, isn’t it, Rose?”

“Oi,” Rose says, swinging back round on her sort-of-boyfriend. “That’s eight hundred pounds, and don’t think you can get away with a pile of tens, either. I'm going to count them. All.”

The Doctor grins, sticks his hands in his pockets and sidles off as planned.

  
9\. _'Listening to him being right all the time when I had the option of a slow, painful death.'_

“All _right,_ ” the Doctor announces in a voice that brooks no arguments, “brilliant one today. Absolutely tip-top, amazingly, fantastically brilliant one. You are not going get this. I hadn’t even heard of it before today, let alone seen one. What is this you’re watching anyway? The Raggy Dolls? Never mind.” He leans past the Master and taps various buttons on the data screen in front of them, the smell of Jacqueline Tyler’s house clinging to him: fried foods and a sweet, flowery air-freshener. “All right,” he says again. “What do you make,” he finishes the programming and stands back with a flourish, “of this?”

The Master glances at the screen, which now is displaying a unpleasant, bulbous, green life-form. “Species designation Kappa beta six-six-seven-four star zero,” he says, turning to look at the Doctor. “Known as the Mol on their home world, and, generally throughout the galaxies, as the Clomion Omnivore.”

“Not an Absorbaloff?”

“I haven’t heard the term used before,” the Master says, enjoying the moment as much as he enjoys all these small victories, “and, though my knowledge of the species is hardly comprehensive, that does suggest the name is not in common usage. I would go further and postulate that you made it up on the spot. Am I correct?”

“It does have a sort of me-ish ring to it,” the Doctor agrees. “On the other hand, there seemed to be a need for a name. Even the thing itself didn’t seem to know what it was. I don’t know. Are you cheating?”

“Possibly,” the Master allows, with a smile. He takes in the Doctor’s coat, which he is still wearing, and the distance between them, and the chair the Doctor hasn’t pulled up next to him. “Are you staying?”

“No,” the Doctor says. “Rose and I are going interplanetary bowling on a Cassixioli Seven. I’ll be back in an hour or two. Want a milkshake? Popcorn? Funny hat? Anything?”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, I’ll be off then.”

The Doctor ducks down and kisses him quickly, fondly, like they are another sort of couple. As usual, the Master manages to resist the urge to hold onto him when he draws away or arrange that nasty accident for Rose before they can leave. He knows the Doctor will return: this is his ship after all. As usual, though, it is a close thing.

In the reflection of the data screen, he watches the Doctor amble away and almost reach the doorway before he spins around on his heel.

“The bowling arcade of Cassixioli Seven,” the Doctor says in the same announcer voice of before, “can be found at the temporal co-ordinates-”

“Zero-zero-triple eight-seven-eight-triple nine-zero,” the Master says smoothly, without taking his eyes from the screen which is, once more, showing the cartoon adventures of a group of unwanted toys. “Have a good time, Doctor.”

  
10\. _‘I can’t do this any more.’_

Rose is gone.

Oh, the Daleks and Cybermen are gone too, but Rose is the most gone, because there will always be more Daleks and more Cybermen. Always. Every time he thinks he’s won, they return in bigger numbers, more vicious than ever, to take something else from him. More Daleks. More Cybermen. No more Rose. Gone, gone, gone, _gone._

The Doctor wants to scream, but can’t seem to manage it. He feels empty, so horribly empty that before he can even face the TARDIS and the Master, he stops in one of the many Starbucks downstairs and drinks three enormous mugs of steaming tea, fast. Bankers and tourists chatter nervously around him.

 _Funny_ , the Doctor thinks without finding it funny at all. The planet was invaded by two sets of alien life forms today. An hour later and the coffee shops are still open for business, people are actually smiling. _Good for them_ , the Doctor thinks. The world moves on.

He orders another industrial sized mug of Earl Grey and drinks it more slowly: the hot tea scalds his throat, which is still tight with grief.

Eventually, after the fifth mug, he stands and walks back to Torchwood tower. A squadron from UNIT have arrived to clean up the mess and the men standing at the main doors wave him through without asking for his name. The Doctor wonders what the cover-up story will be this time, but can’t bring himself to care.

The TARDIS is where he left it. Again, the UNIT guards step aside for him, no questions asked. Someone high up must know he’s here — spotted the police box, presumably; must’ve spread the word. The Doctor unlocks the doors, steps inside, shuts the doors again. He throws his coat over one of the archways. There’s a top of Rose’s still hanging over the railings which she brought in this morning to get his opinion — not that she took it when he gave it — and left there. The Doctor doesn’t move the top, or look at it. He programs the TARDIS to take them into the vortex and goes to make himself a sandwich.

He is still buttering the first piece of bread, twenty minutes later, when the Master asks, “And how was your day?” from the doorway.

“Bad,” the Doctor says. He stares at the failed sandwich in front of him without seeing it. “Bad, it was - bad. Cybermen and Daleks, a lot of Daleks. It’s all right,” he adds, hearing the minute, shuddered false-breath behind him, “I got rid of them. Weren’t you,” he clears his throat, “watching the screens? The news?”

“Difficult as it may be to believe, I do occasionally find things to occupy myself with whilst you’re away,” the Master says without moving. “Those things do not always involve peering at the display screens in the hope of seeing your face.” He pauses. “I notice, Doctor, that we are currently in the vortex sans companion. Can it be that Rose has decided that the life of a time traveller is not for her after all?”

“No,” the Doctor says.

“No?”

“Trapped,” the Doctor says thickly. “With her mum and Mickey. Trapped in another universe-”

He takes a breath and hears it emerge as a high-pitched sob. That sob leads to another and another until he is definitely sobbing: loudly and embarrassingly, his entire face crumpling in on itself, taking in shuddering breathes when he can. Everything hurts, and the Doctor leans against the worktop as his body finally gives in, his arms shaking.

He turns at the light pressure of a hand at the small of his back, a quiet, firm, _“Doctor”,_ and leans against the Master, weeps into the other man’s shoulder. He feels absurd: a stupid child seeking comfort from a mass murderer. The Master doesn’t hold him, but he doesn’t draw away and that is enough actually, that is all right.

After an unidentifiable length of time, the Master says, “Stop this now,” and the Doctor pulls himself together and obeys. It’s not like the Master has any real hypnotic power any more, but it’s difficult to remember that sometimes. And he does need to stop. He breathes in, smoothes down the fabric of the Master’s shirt creased in his earlier grip, breathes in. The grief is still there, fluttering at the back of his throat, but he feels in control of it now. And he’s beginning to have ideas.

 _“Good,”_ the Master says softly, and not-unkindly. He puts a hand to the Doctor’s jaw and pulls him gently into a kiss which tastes of snot and any tears the Doctor hasn’t already wiped into the Master’s shirt. Despite this, it is a good kiss, a relieving kiss. One of the Master’s hands around his jaw, the other at his waist: holding him together.

When the Master draws away, the Doctor feels collected enough to talk again. “I’ve got a plan,” he explains thickly. “No, don’t worry,” he says, attempting a weak smile when the Master raises his eyebrows. “You’ll like it. I’m going to blow up a sun.”

“I see,” the Master says carefully. “Why?”

“There are still gaps between the universes,” the Doctor explains. “If I can crack one of them open just a tiny bit, with, say, the force of a supernova-”

“Oh Doctor, don’t be absurd,” the Master says, his features creasing with amusement briefly, before they reset into thought. “Even assuming you managed to locate one of these gaps, you would hardly be able to pilot the TARDIS through it. You could, perhaps, project an image of yourself, but for two minutes, three minutes at the absolute maximum.”

The Doctor nods. “Exactly. Long enough to say goodbye. I’ve never been very good at them, but I think-”

 _“You think?”_ the Master repeats.

“Yes,” the Doctor says as the Master turns away, “I think, Master, that-”

“Doctor,” the Master says, turning back suddenly, “this body is new and it has, clearly, yet to develop any coping mechanisms, so I’ll forgive you your hypocrisy, for your self-absorbed grieving process, and for the insult, which I’m sure you aren’t even aware of. Just as I have always forgiven you.”

“What?” the Doctor says.

 _“Reinette Poisson,”_ the Master says. “Mickey Smith, Jack Harkness, Adam Mitchell, Lucie Miller, Charlotte Pollard, Grace Holloway. You’ll notice, Doctor, that I’m listing them in reverse order. I find it easier to keep track of them this way. Dorothy McShane-”

 _“What?”_ the Doctor says again. “Master, this isn’t about any of them. Rose-”

“-was just another human,” the Master says, as though this settles the matter.

“…What?” the Doctor says again, when he can say anything at all.

The Master sighs irritably. “That was badly phrased,” he says. “I didn’t mean-”

“Of course you did,” the Doctor says.

 _“My dear Doctor,”_ the Master begins firmly, but that is as good as an affirmation.

Without another look at him, the Doctor turns on his heel and strides out of the kitchen and down the corridor. _Of course._ After all this time, all the tea and the sex and the way the Master watches him whilst the Doctor pretends to be asleep, he is still the Master. He has tolerated the Doctor’s friends because they keep him busy and keep him safe, but, at the end of the day, the Doctor can replace them as simply as he might a goldfish, flushed to goldfish heaven down a toilet. Another planet, another pet shop, and there’s another human, waiting to be shown the marvels of the universe. Of course. It’s only natural that the Master would try to stop what he must see as a ludicrous expedition down into the sewers. Only natural, of course. But that doesn’t make it any less of a betrayal. And anger is a much easier emotion than misery.

“Leave me alone,” he says coldly, when the Master catches up with him.

“So you can detonate your sun in peace?” the Master asks, with, the Doctor thinks, a hint of a sneer. “Doctor, you’re behaving completely irrationally, even given your usually high standards.”

“Go away,” the Doctor says. “I’ll talk to you later.”

 _“Doctor-”_ the Master says, and it is at this point that the Doctor presses the only button on the remote in his pocket.

Whatever it was that the Master had to say is silenced as every system in his body shuts down at once. The Doctor hears the creak and the clank that is the front of the Master’s mechanical face dislocating and opening, but he doesn’t turn around. He is coolly aware that he has just done something terrible, but to acknowledge it now would mean reversing it. Reversing it would mean never seeing Rose again. It won’t be for long. The scars between the universes are healing fast. He will turn the Master back on once he’s said goodbye.

There are only four stars on the right nexus points of space and time. _So few,_ the Doctor thinks, trying not panic, when the TARDIS displays them for him. The walls are closing faster than he thought. Just four. Three of which are, and have to remain, the centres of life supporting solar systems for at least another couple of billion years after they could be any use. The fourth, though, is hanging alone in the backwaters of space, light-years away from anything in any dimension. It will be enough.

The Doctor works quickly and calmly. Just going to the point at which the star dies naturally won’t crack the universe at the right point. There are numerous crude methods of pushing a sun into supernova, of course, but they’re almost certainly going to lead to problems later on and he can’t have that. Fortunately, it should be possible to enclose the star in the TARDIS’s temporal field and increase the speed of degeneration of that small area of space. Possible, anyway, if you’re a genius and the owner of the last Time and Relative Dimension in Space machine in the universe, which the Doctor is. He might lose a bit of time in the process, Rose might be waiting around for a while, but it should be _possible._

He hasn’t done anything like this since he closed the Medusa Cascade and that was centuries ago. It’s fun, actually — if you like inter-dimensional logic puzzles, which the Doctor does. And, after all the time engineering the process, he feels a surge of exultation as he tugs the star past the end its life cycle.

It’s been about a week — as far as he can tell. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to sleep in his own bedroom whilst he’s been working, or to use the primary kitchen. Fortunately, it looks like the TARDIS has taken pity on him and doesn’t rearrange the corridors in the night. The Doctor had wondered if she would take the Master’s side in this, but he always ends up where he wants to go, except the day he finds himself in the third floor billiard room which is filling up, quietly, with snow.

As it turns out, the heating system is easily fixable. It’s built around a polygonal psychic circuit he got from a dimension jumper on Gryben, which the Master must be unfamiliar with, but which the Doctor knows like the back of his hand. Better, actually, as it’s a new hand. He considers fixing the circuit, but eventually decides he prefers the idea of snow-billiards, thanks the TARDIS for bringing it to his attention again, and takes a different route back to the console room.

Now, he swings the TARDIS into the orbit of his new supernova. It’s a brilliant piece of flying, and, caught of guard by his own incredible skill, the Doctor finds himself wishing the- that someone had been watching.

Still, spectacular though the explosion and the flying are, they’re really more of a means to an end, and that end is practically in sight now. The TARDIS dutifully harnesses the power of the sun’s early death, the Doctor feeds it back through the telepathic communication network and, with a bit of a whoop, punches through into Rose’s new world.

It’s not hard to find her. The TARDIS locates the three people from their universe, and then homes in on the one she knows best. The Doctor lends Rose his knowledge whilst she sleeps. There’s still a big area of her mind — opened by her contact with the TARDIS — that is more than capable of comprehending what it is she needs to know. Awake, it’ll all seem a bit hazy, but there should be enough residual understanding to get her to him.

The Doctor waits, and, eventually, they arrive: Rose, her mum and dad, and Mickey. And, for a while, it is worth it.

“I - _love you,_ ” Rose manages, after they’ve lost most of their time together.

“Quite right, too,” the Doctor agrees with a broken smile, because, really — if she didn’t, and he’d done this, it would be unbearable. More unbearable. “And I suppose,” he says, “if it’s my last chance to say it.” Oh, he has so many things he should have said earlier. He wants to tell her how fantastic she was, again, because she was brilliant. He wants to explain how seeing things with her made them matter more, to thank her for saving him so many times, to apologise for cheating the only time he won Monopoly, and for almost leaving her in the 51st century, and for never telling her about the Master, because he loves her in a way that’s just as valid as the way he loves the Master, and that’s what the Master could never understand.

“Rose Tyler-” he says, and then the image of the beach dissolves and the TARDIS fades back into focus, and there doesn’t seem to be any point continuing, because she can’t hear him anymore. The breaks have healed. That was it.

The Doctor rubs his eyes with both hands, then the rest of his face. The last few days have allowed him to work through his noisy grief. It’s settled as a low, ever-present ache in his stomach. He feels like a grimmer man now, after this regeneration’s first tragedy: regressed, perhaps, to the man he was before Rose gave him a red paper hat and fell asleep on his shoulder during _It’s a Wonderful Life._ No second chances: that sort of man. He feels like he can almost cope like this. The Master will be pleased.

With another steadying breath, the Doctor crosses to the chronometer and winds it back a couple of thousand years. Slowly, he walks round the console checking that all the instruments are functioning correctly and then looks up to see a woman in a wedding dress where there hadn’t been a woman in a wedding dress a moment before.

“What?” he says. And then, again, _“What?”_ , and a couple more times as the woman shouts at him to explain something he knows is impossible, and to take her home, _now._

She keeps shouting at him, even when he does. The Doctor finds this annoying once he’s stopped being baffled and, then, reasonably endearing, once he’s stopped being annoyed. He likes Donna, and is quite willing to rescue her from the taxi-driving robot Santa when the situation calls for it.

Of course, as he’s hanging out of the door over a busy motorway, attempting to steer the TARDIS using a long piece of very cheap string wrapped around the primary controls, it does occur to the Doctor that things would be a lot easier if his live-in lover were at the console, rather than stationery in one of the corridors. But he does all right.

He does better with the huon particles and the Empress of the Racnoss, though he finds himself making mental notes to tell the Master about both. The re-appearance of the Racnoss is just a curiosity, but the Master will be excessively amused to learn that people are manufacturing huon particles again. They’ve been banned so long that the Master was still Koschei at the time and still trying to make a name for himself the slow way: through politics. He’d been the one to point out the potential danger of huon particles to a, now, long dead High Council.

Of course, once he’d turned renegade, he’d attempted to contaminate the water of an entire planet with the same particles, but, by then, the Time Lords knew what they were looking for and shut him down within minutes. Idiot.

It’s probably the memory of their fight about the lone Dalek that forces his hand with the Racnoss. Really, it’s genocide and in any other circumstances-

But they shouldn’t be here. With multi-faceted Christmas baubles and a tide of dirty water, the Doctor finishes the job the Time Lords started millennia ago and destroys the new-born Racnoss before they have a chance to hurt anyone.

Then he follows Donna out of the rapidly flooding basement and they walk along the bottom of the Thames in the direction of the TARDIS, arguing about whose shoes are more likely to be ruined by the silt, until a man with a crane pulls them out. He drops them off at the TARDIS, and the Doctor drops Donna off at her house.

This turns out to be a mistake, because she invites him in for Christmas dinner. With the Master still inactive in the TARDIS, Rose still lost, and another genocide on his conscience, the Doctor is fairly sure it’s not the right time to don another paper hat and watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_ — which is probably on — again. But, then, what is appropriate? He’s already made it snow.

“Find someone,” Donna says, as he tries to leave.

“I don’t need anyone,” the Doctor replies, which is obviously, pathetically a lie.

“Yes, you do,” Donna says, surprisingly gently. “‘Cause sometimes - I think you need someone to stop you.”

She’s right, of course. Donna Noble is a much wiser woman than she appears: she would have been a brilliant companion. The Doctor nods, and leaves her standing in his snow.

He makes a ludicrously showy exit, and then jogs down to the corridor in which the Master still stands. The jog turns into a run as soon as the static figure of his lover comes into view.

The Master is caught, like a photograph of himself, mid-stride, one arm outstretched. The only movement in his entire frame is a blur of lights inside the open front of his face. In the dull-anger and dull-misery of the last week, the Doctor had managed to forget how awful this is. Now, it breaks his hearts.

He skids to a stop in front of the Master, closes the Master’s face with fingers that cringe at the touch of familiar skin in such an unnatural position, and steps back.

After a moment of horrible, dead stillness, the Master blinks and his mouth begins to form the end of a sentence he’d begun over a week ago. Then he takes in the Doctor’s altered position and frowns. “You seem, Doctor, to be considerably wetter than I remember,” he remarks.

“It’s snowing outside,” the Doctor explains, and hears the words shudder with guilt and relief.

The Master rubs his eyes and breathes out, though, of course, he doesn’t need to. The air he’s exhaling now has been stored in a small partition just below his left shoulder for approximately seven days and is completely unconnected to the gentle fall of his chest. “I see.”

“I’m so sorry,” the Doctor says.

“Thank you, Doctor, but it makes no difference,” the Master says. “I have one question that I would like you to answer and then I don’t want you to talk to me again, is that clear?” He pauses long enough for the Doctor to nod, then says, “How long was I,” his mouth twitches, “ _off_ for?”

 _“Master-”_

 _“How long?”_ the Master repeats, voice steely.

“A week,” the Doctor says. He sticks his hands into the pockets of his trousers, to stop them betraying his discomfort. “You were off for a week.”

The Master nods and walks past him without another word.

The Doctor closes his eyes, drops his head to his chest and breathes: long, slow breaths that fill and empty his lungs. Then, he turns and walks back to the console room.

The console room is empty. The Doctor fiddles unnecessarily with some of the controls for a while and then wanders off to take a shower. When he gets back, the console room is still empty. So is their bedroom, so are the kitchens, the recreation rooms, the bathrooms, both swimming pools, the gardens, the zeppelin hanger, the zero room, the croquet pitch, the library, the— in fact, all the rooms the Doctor can be bothered to check are empty. When questioned, the TARDIS lets him know the Master is still on board, but won’t divulge anything further.

“Taking sides, at last,” the Doctor grumbles, and goes off to sleep in his own room if the Master isn’t going to.

The next morning, he makes a rough tour of the TARDIS and discovers he has a present wrapping room and another room filled entirely with statues of Peri, which the poor girl must have been given by various amorous suitors, and tribes who wanted to worship, then ritually sacrifice her. He doesn’t find the Master.

The Master doesn’t re-appear the next day either. The Doctor wanders the corridors, half expecting to the find the Master waiting, like the tin man without his oil can, but there’s no one there, again.

He tries to make a few repairs to the ship, but the Master’s fixed everything already. So the Doctor fiddles about in the lab instead, creates a variety of squeezey soap that doesn’t smell completely terrible, and goes to sleep — on the left hand side of the bed, which, tragically, still smells a bit like the absent Master.

The TARDIS picks up a distress call early the next morning. It’s from a tiny world the Doctor has never been to before, populated by a race of people who look uncannily like Kermit the frog. The Kermits — who are, actually, known as Deebeneems — are rapidly running out of water. Their giant lakes dried up, suddenly, during the night about a week ago, and they’ve been surviving on old bath water and increasingly expensive bottled water, shipped in by the Evian company, ever since.

Accompanied by one of the young frog-people, the Doctor scrambles down in the empty basin of Lake Woargar, the closest lake to his landing site, and quickly locates the concealed entrance to a series of metal-lined tunnels. At the bottom of these tunnels is a huge reservoir: owned — according to a large stencilled sign — by the Evian company.

A few minor technical modifications and a good smack with a metal bar convince the suction pump that it wants to expel the water back into the lakes. The Doctor and his Deebeneem friend, Herbie ride the water flow back up the tunnels, popping out of the top at dizzying speed and splashing down, laughing and shrieking, in the newly reinstated Lake Woargar.

The Doctor tries to slip away during the party in his honour, only to find the TARDIS door locked from the inside. He knocks politely, then shrugs and wanders back to the party.

Three hours later, he tries again, but the door is still locked. “This isn’t funny or clever,” the Doctor informs the closed door. “Let me in!” He hammers on it, rather less politely than last time, but neither the door, nor the Master respond. Instead a deferential voice asks, “Um. Are you all right there, Mister Doctor?” from behind him.

“Yes,” the Doctor says wearily, stepping back from his ship and turning to the diminutive Herbie. “I think I’m sleeping on the proverbial couch tonight, though.”

“Oh. Well, you can stay with me, if you like,’ Herbie suggests.

“That would be,” the Doctor says, “in your pond.”

“Thanks to you,” Herbie agrees happily. “Come on. I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

The Doctor spends a rather damp night in Herbie’s above-pond-level conservatory and, in the morning, the TARDIS doors open when he twists his key in the Yale lock. Unfortunately, there is a large white space behind them, instead of the console room. But, as luck would have it, the Doctor recognises the effect as a rather obscure desktop theme. A joke setting, with which to confound and delight your friends! (Time Lords, as a rule, had a rubbish sense of humour).

He closes the doors and walks slowly towards what ought to be the middle of the room. Sure enough, his open palm meets the hard edge of a hexagonal console about twenty paces in. The desktop settings are controlled using the main computer, which lights up, obediently, in mid-air when the Doctor locates the right keyboard with his hands.

It’s too easy, of course, and so the Doctor isn’t at all surprised when a dialogue box pops up reading, _Nice try_. He _is_ surprised, though, when the entire computer immediately shuts itself down once he’s read the message. Very impressive. The Master clearly has almost total control of the TARDIS.

With the computer down, he has to make his modifications manually. In the ‘hilarious’ Invisibility Mode, this is difficult, but not at all impossible, given the number of times the Doctor has had to make modifications to his ship in the past.

There are standard roundels in the walls, which are the standard distance from the console. The Doctor locates the correct one, opens it and tugs the invisible power lines loose. By reversing the polarity, he jumps starts the back-up computer. Then all the lights go out.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” the Doctor exclaims.

 _“All_ right,” he mutters, when this fails to have any effect. “What next?” At least the back-up computer is on now. Probably. Probably on.

He works his way over to the console and carefully removes one of the three mallets from underneath it. The trick is, obviously, to be unexpected. The Master will expect him to work on the problem of the lights or the desktop. Well, the Doctor thinks, easing the hand-break up with the non-mallet hand, he won’t expect _this._

In three quick mallet strokes, he takes out the circuits controlling the dimensions of the three places the Master is most likely to be lurking: his study, the bedroom, and the second floor corridor with all the useful roundels. At the same time, he pushes the TARDIS into flight and, with his foot, depresses the lever that will force all the internal doors open. Light from the corridors leading off the console room emanates from five points in the darkness. The Doctor grins as his hands appear in the gloom.

With the sound of the time rotor wheezing, normally, in his ears, he activates all the auto-pilot safety measures, reaches round with the mallet to give the acceleration a thumping boost, and spins the chronometer on another five million years. Another mallet-thump changes the destination galaxy. A swipe of his other hand takes out all the switches controlling altitude. Just before landing, he pushes through the navigational circuits — which the Master still doesn’t have access to, thank god — and into the main computer. Re-routing the power from the forced acceleration, he kick-starts the computer, manually-dematerialising on — what he really hopes is — a barren asteroid, as he does so.

With a flicker of light TARDIS restarts, defaulting to its factory settings: clean white roundels, a comforting low level light and — _oh, yes_ — isomorphic controls, keyed in the genetic code of the current pilot.

“Ha,” the Doctor shouts, withdrawing his hands from the restored console with a flourish. He waves the mallet, sternly, in the direction of the ceiling. “Now, don’t try anything like again. You can’t, anyway. I’ve locked you out. Of everything. Come and talk to me if that gets boring.” Then he grins, because he’s won, and because he wants to be infuriating, and because he hasn’t had as much fun since the UNIT days, when the Master came to bother him with Axons and Sea Devils. “Right,” he says, ruffling his hair, which is a bit flat thanks, in large part, to the humidity of the conservatory, “I’m going to have a bath.”

There isn’t any hot water. Propped behind the taps is a note in the Master’s handwriting, which reads, _Nice try._ On cue, the lights go out again.

Over the next couple of weeks, the Doctor gets better at foiling the Master’s various revenge strategies, but the randomiser continues to evade him. It’s definitely wired into the TARDIS mainframe _somewhere_ , but the Doctor has searched the entire thing — manually and digitally — and it’s, also, definitely _not._ To make matters worse the scanner is on the blink again, and so he steps out onto most of the randomly selected worlds with absolutely no idea where he is.

Most of the planets are fine. Interesting, even; populated with interesting people, some of whom the Doctor might have happily asked to come with him if there wasn’t a strong chance the Master would murder them while they slept.

Some planets are at war, which is less convenient. Some are dangerously low on oxygen, which is even less convenient. And some of them — like the one the Doctor is currently on — turn out, after a while, to be Traal: home to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast, which is bad. Very bad.

Shielding himself with his coat in an attempt to convince the creature he isn’t there, the Doctor legs it back to the TARDIS. Then he falls over a tree-stump.

He’s up and running again almost immediately, but the fall has distracted him and he’s forgotten about the coat. There’s a deafening roar and the Doctor has time to think _Uh oh, it can see me again_ , before the Beast’s claws rip into his right thigh.

Ignoring the incredible pain and the gaping hole in his trousers, he pulls his coat up over his face before the Beast can go for his throat. There is a pause. The Doctor risks a peek round the side of his collar at the monster. It’s looking around in stupid confusion. After a moment, it wanders back the way it’d come, looking peculiarly mournful to have lost sight of its prey so late in the game.

Limping now, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS, fumbles with his keys and collapses on the floor, laughing. It takes him a moment to realise that the floor has taken the form of grating — part of his old coral theme — rather than the pink-zebra-striped shag-pile carpet it had been this morning.

Then, from the console, the Master says, “ _Pathetic._ Absolutely pathetic.”

“You think?” the Doctor asks. Yep, this is his coral theme, all right. Exactly as he remembers it, down to the grime in between the lattice grating. The Master is reading a book in the jump seat, feet propped up on the bronze console. The Doctor shakes his head, with a smile. “Most people get eaten, I did quite well, only,” he attempts to stand and growls with the pain, “getting my leg nearly ripped off.”

Without looking up from his book, the Master throws him a sealed syringe packet. It’s a large dose of morphine. At least, it appears to be. It could always be something nasty that the Master has cooked up in his free time, but the leg is more painful than the Doctor had given it credit for earlier. He’s willing to take the chance the syringe is what it appears: an offer of truce. Leaning back against the door, he rips into the packet with his teeth, pulls off the protective covering, gets rid of the excess air, and stabs the needle into his exposed thigh.

A wave of calm washes through him as the drug enters his system. The Doctor breathes out. “Thank you.”

“Perhaps, Doctor,” the Master says, “you should consider acquiring another companion, before you manage to kill yourself entirely."

The Doctor huffs a short laugh: still propped up against the doors of his ship. The Master takes his feet off the console, closes his book and looks up at the Doctor at last. “And, potentially, another suit,” he adds.

The Doctors eyes widen. “But I love my suit.”

The Master favours him with a slight smile. “I’m sure you could learn to love another suit,” he says, standing. “Blue,” he adds, as an after thought, at the door, “would become you very well.”

“Not going to help me to the medi-bay, then,” the Doctor calls after his retreating figure.

“No, my dear Doctor, I am not,” the Master says, which the Doctor takes to mean that, in some obscure way, he’s been forgiven.


	4. Series 3

11\. _‘You remind me of all the others. Horrifyingly.’_

The woman in the photograph is beautiful. Exceptionally beautiful, even with her perfectly defined lips in the uncomfortable, too-wide smile of someone posing for a photograph on their first day in a new job. The Master tilts the plastic badge so that lines of light flow across the laminate surface, disrupting the image like a stone thrown in the water. The woman remains beautiful.

Her name is printed to the left of the photograph, below the name of the hospital and above the words _medical student._ “Martha Jones,” the Master reads aloud.

“Martha Jones,” the Doctor agrees from the bed. “What’d’you think?” he asks, without looking up from the new sonic screwdriver he has, rather impressively, managed to construct from scratch, in a little less than half an hour.

“Beautiful,” the Master says.

“Is she?” the Doctor asks. He activates the sonic device, which emits a whirring noise, changes the setting and nods with approval when it produces a higher frequency whirr.

“My dear Doctor, you know she is.”

Leaving the screwdriver on the beside table for the moment, the Doctor crosses to the replacement chaise longue, putting on his glasses as he does so. He peers at the badge, which the Master obligingly holds out for him, and makes a small noise of pleased, faux-surprise. “I suppose she is.” He takes the glasses off again.

“Like all the others,” the Master says, but in a tone that conveys he is amused at the Doctor’s predictability, rather than slighted, horrified or disgusted. “However, I imagine that, despite appearances, she and I are much alike?”

“No,” the Doctor says, with almost private smile. “Martha’s more like me.” He retrieves the identification badge and wanders away with it. “Brave. Resourceful. Compassionate. Undaunted by the universe. Snappy dresser. Not bad at running. And, of course, she’s-”

“- _training to be a doctor,_ ” the Master says with him.

“What noble ambition,” the Doctor says, with a broad grin reflected in the bedroom mirror.

The Master shakes his head and reaches for his book. “Which room have you put her in, then?”

“None of them,” the Doctor says and turns, having slotted the badge into the mirror’s frame, “yet. I haven’t asked her to come with me. If she gets here and finds I’ve already decorated for her, she’ll think some sort of crazed stalker and go away again. It’s happened before, Master, I’m not falling for that.”

“Then,” the Master says, “are you here to ask for my permission?”

The Doctor nods. “That’s right."

It’s light and almost thrown away and the Master experiences a brief rush of pleasure at the thought it might well be the truth, before it occurs to him that training the Doctor to this extent would be impossible and, ultimately, unrewarding.

He raises an eyebrow, and the Doctor admits, “All right, no,” with a smile. “Well, no,” he amends, “actually, sort of. I haven’t asked her yet, really, I haven’t, but I think I’m going to. The first time we met, the first time I met her that is, she said something funny about how I’d come up to her in the street and taken my tie off. Didn’t think much of it when she said it, bigger things afoot. But, on reflection,” he sucks air in through his teeth, “it does sound a lot like something I’d do to prove I was a time traveller and not a lunatic.

“Of course,” he continues, sticking his hands in his pockets, “that doesn’t mean she’s onboard forever. Could be a trial run. Or just a single trip sort of thing. She might even say _no_. But the Web of Time has spoken: I ask her.”

“Apparently so,” the Master agrees. “With that in mind, one might ask why you’re here with me, rather than off waving your clothing at the beautiful Miss Jones.”

“…I’m waiting for your permission,” the Doctor says, as though thoroughly bemused.

“Despite the immovable temporal event that suggests you’re going to ask her along, whether or not I give it?”

“Might as well,” the Doctor says and grins a quick, silly grin.

Charmed, despite himself, the Master says, “You have it, then.”

“Thanks,” the Doctor says. “Right. Well, I’m off to see a girl.” He straightens his tie, with an overly serious expression. “How do I look?”

The Master considers him. The blue suit is cut to a similar pattern to the Doctor’s traditional brown, and, like the original, seems to be adhered to every curve of his thin body. However, where the brown suit was the Doctor’s choice, the blue belongs to the Master. He hasn’t been allowed to influence the Doctor’s eccentric style of dress before. Even Theta seemed determined to take his opinion merely to disregard it. Here, the light blue shirt is the Master’s choice, the burgundy tie likewise: both badges that declare the man wearing them influenced and owned.

The Master allows his eyes to rove over every inch of his Doctor, enjoying the smile creeping out of the corner of the Doctor’s mouth as much as anything else. “Like a man with no shoes,” he declares eventually.

The Doctor looks down at his feet, flexes his toes. “Good point,” he says and strides over to the bed, under which lurk numerous pairs of Converse All Stars in a dazzling variety of colours.

As the Doctor pulls them all out in search of his secondary maroon pair, the Master abandons the chaise longue, rises and crosses, silently, to him. Soon, the Doctor locates the relevant shoes with a loud ‘Ah ha!’ and throws them backwards into the room.

He twists his head to follow their progress and finds himself pulled upwards by his tie, pushed backwards onto the mattress. The Master crawls over him, undoing whichever random button combination the Doctor has chosen to fasten his jacket as he does so.

“No shoes, eh?” the Doctor murmurs, in between kisses.

“I may, I admit, have other thoughts,” the Master says, sitting up: one leg either side of the Doctor’s body. He runs his hands over the Doctor’s exposed shirt front and down to where it is tucked into his trousers. “The blue does suit you very well.”

“As you suggested it would,” the Doctor grins, as his trousers are opened and unzipped, and the pale blue shirt pulled free of them.

“I have excellent taste,” the Master agrees, returning to the kiss. “ _Leave it_ ,” he says, firmly, into the Doctor’s mouth, as he feels the Doctor try to undo his own buttons.

He pushes his weight backwards until his head is at a level with the Doctor’s chest, lowers his mouth over the man’s left nipple and bites hard through the thin fabric of the shirt and the thicker undershirt beneath. The Doctor grunts and makes a faux attempt to wriggle away as the Master teases the same nipple with firm strokes of his tongue, before biting it again and moving to the other. Long, thin hands clench at the Master’s back, one slides down to his arse; the Doctor’s head presses back into the mattress, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his long neck as he swallows in between gasps.

When the Master abandons his nipples to kiss his open mouth, the Doctor’s tongue slides quickly against his. The Master is about to pull away to attend to other parts of the Doctor’s anatomy, when he feels the Doctor’s hand, warm and slick, sliding into his trousers. These he has, apparently, managed to open without the Master’s notice. The Doctor cocks his eyebrows in friendly challenge and manoeuvres his hand into a more comfortable position.

Propping himself above the Doctor on one forearm, the Master feels around with his free, right hand for the lubricant. His fingers spasm slightly as the Doctor’s fingers find the area between his balls, but he manages to coat his hand, return to the Doctor’s erection and close his fingers around it. The Doctor grimaces at the contact, his mouth falls open and the rhythm of his own hand on the Master’s cock increases.

With difficulty, the Master repositions himself above the Doctor and lays kisses down the curve of his jaw to where the base of his throat is exposed by the collar of the blue shirt. The Doctor tilts his chin downwards and the Master returns to his trembling mouth. With a few more weak kisses the Doctor’s body spasms, his hand clenches around the Master’s erection.

The Master smirks and moves his hand to close around the Doctor’s, which has momentarily paused. With a few more collaborative strokes, his own orgasm spreads warmly throughout his circuits, and the Master comes over the Doctor’s stomach.

Slowly, he lowers himself onto the Doctor, who has somewhat recovered now and now encloses the Master's face in both sticky hands, pressing light kisses into his lips in between small gasps of air. When the Master slides off him, the Doctor rolls over with him and continues the exercise from above instead. It is all very pleasant, but this doesn’t discourage the Master from pushing him away with a firm hand to his chest.

“Shouldn’t you be going now, Doctor?”

“Hmm?” the Doctor enquires.

“Miss Jones,” the Master prompts. “Aren’t you supposed to take off your tie to impress her?”

“What? Now?” the Doctor says, bemused. The Master raises an eyebrow, and the Doctor huffs exaggerated frustration and rolls away. “All right: now.”

He stands, examines his tie and discovers the thin trail of semen dangling from its tip and, lower down, the larger mess over his stomach. “Probably best to change first, though,” he decides, yanking the tie open and dragging it over his head.

The Master watches lazily as the Doctor wriggles out of his trousers, finishes removing his jacket and shirt, and dons the brown suit, a pale grey shirt, and a pair of clean, cream converse.

“Tie?” he asks, holding out two almost identical examples.

“That one,” the Master says, indicating the paisley.

With a nod, the Doctor throws the chosen tie back into the wardrobe and slides the other under his collar, tying it quickly and tightly and pulling it into position. He pockets the sonic screwdriver as he passes the bedside table, presses a light kiss to the Master’s lips and leaves.

A moment later, he returns. “I’m sorry, but are you going to jump me every time I wear the blue suit?”

“Very possibly,” the Master says.

“Right,” the Doctor says, frowning with consideration. “I’ll have to get it cleaned then.”

Having reached this conclusion, he nods, and leaves to impress his new human girl by breaking the Laws of Time, again.

  
12\. _’I seem to have found some form. I might not be quite so useless now.’_

To celebrate Martha’s no longer ‘just a passenger’ status and their both not being eaten by a giant man-scorpion beast, the Doctor takes his companion dancing in the TARDIS’s Grand Ballroom. They are, after all, already dressed for the occasion and the Doctor hasn’t had much use out of his tux yet.

He pours her champagne and insists she drink at least two glasses before they actually start dancing. Once they’re sufficiently pissed, he waltzes her around the shiny floor to the sound of an old Alperrian song the TARDIS seems to think is appropriate.

Relaxed, she moves well, though she’s clearly learned the dance from television and weddings, and weddings on television. The Doctor — who has danced at all the great courts in the universe and once on stage in ’73 due to a misunderstanding about which door led outside — leads her confidently: correcting her footwork without appearing to and enjoying the chance to do something nice for Martha, for once. Not something he ever did for Rose, either, though she would have enjoyed it, if The Day Everybody Lived is anything to go by…

Another dance, another three glasses of champagne, and he’s drunk enough to show her some of the more unusual dances popular across the galaxy.

“You’re kidding me,” Martha laughs, as he demonstrates the Venusian waltz: a series of graceful movements that end in him sweeping a spindly chair into his arms and bringing it sharply down on top of another chair, so that both chairs shatter. “I’m not doing that. I’ll be thrown out.”

“You won’t,” the Doctor insists, with an airy wave of the hand not holding bits of chair. He drops that part into the pile. “Incredibly violent people, the Venusians. A dance just isn’t a dance if they don’t break the odd bit of furniture. Just don’t hurt the piano. I like that piano.”

He skips the Furkifur Intermingle, as neither of them can lose their corporal form on command, and shows her, instead, the Phramiash Water Jive, in which both partners start with two oversized cups filled with liquid. The aim is, in principal, to keep your partner dry throughout the energetic dance. In practise, though, the Doctor informs Martha, with the absolute seriousness of a man thoroughly drunk, it is generally accepted that the aim is to completely soak your partner as soon as possible. She laughs, and so does he, and then, in the same instant, they flick their assigned water cups over the other.

The TARDIS switches off the gravity and the Doctor and his companion spiral up towards the ceiling. Martha’s expression is caught between a frown and a beam as she tries to keep her damp skirt from rising upwards _a la_ Marilyn Monroe. The Doctor passes on instructions for one of the easier forms of anti-gravity tango, all of which are summarily ignored.

When they drift back down to the polished ballroom floor some time later, they’ve both dried out and the Doctor accedes to Martha’s request for a final “normal” dance. They sway together to Elton John’s _Goodbye Yellow Brick Road_ , Martha’s arms wrapped sleepily around his neck. Then Martha says she really has to go now, Doctor, and he lets her stumble off to bed.

It’s long past the time he usually returns to the bedroom he shares with the Master. As he’s already late, though, he figures a few more hours won’t hurt. The damage, if there is any, has already been done. Of course, the Master doesn’t actually sleep any more, but his programming includes the ability to grow weary. This can be overridden if the Master deems it necessary, but this has yet to happen. The organic routines are important to both of them. Still-

The Doctor claps his hands together and whirls on the room. He’s currently buzzing with alcohol and definitely not tired. It’s not the right time to leave. The Master will want to talk or shag and neither of those appeal right now to the Doctor. He wants to do something. It’s not clear what, yet, but something. And the Master can come and find him, if necessary. He probably will.

The Doctor spins, only half taking in the heap of broken furniture and the giant chandelier and the crowd of instruments in the raised dais. It’s been a long time since there was an actual ball here, he thinks, as he bounds up towards the piano. Must be — he considers this, through the haze of alcohol — approximately… yes, approximately never. The room is one of the few originals. One of the standards built into the Type 40. A place for Time Lord diplomats to entertain visiting dignitaries.

Thinking of the Time Lords makes him think of the Time War, and the Time War makes him think of the Daleks. Why is it always the _Daleks_ who come back? the Doctor thinks, with a touch of irony, even in his own mind. He opens the piano lid and plays a brief scale, just to get the fingers used to it. No chance anyone from the other side survived, no. Just the Daleks. Brilliant. Fantastic.

He hasn’t told the Master about the most recent bunch and the one that got away yet, and isn’t going to. Actually, that might be why he doesn’t want to go back just yet. It isn’t coddling, the Master doesn’t need coddling, but he would want to find and destroy Dalek Caan. And perhaps, the Doctor concedes privately, that is the right thing to do: after all, Caan could be up to anything out there in space and time. But the Doctor’s a coward any day. And he’s not willing to countenance a murderous revenge mission. Not even one that might, ultimately, be for the good of the universe.

Fortunately, he'd been wearing the blue suit when he'd gone to change into his tux. Then he’d dropped a few choice phrases about how he’d just been to America and wasn’t that where the Master had had a lovely time as a gelatinous snake all those years ago? and this had served to convince the Master that there were better things to do with the two hours before Lazarus’s do, than talking about America and any past adventures there.

The sex had helped distract them both. By the time the Doctor adjusted his bowtie in the mirror, he’d practically forgotten about the human Daleks and the missing Dalek Caan. Even now it seems like something he’ll have to worry about later. Now, he’s happy: sitting, playing Beethoven on his own, beautiful grand piano.

He’s well into the Moonlight Sonata by the time the Master arrives, signalling his presence with the light pressure of a hand at the back of the Doctor’s neck.

“I don’t believe I’ve heard you play before,” he says, as his hand slides downwards to rest on the Doctor’s shoulder.

“You never asked,” the Doctor replies.

“True,” the Master says. “It never seemed the right time. And I had other concerns. But you do play beautifully.”

The Doctor smiles into a crescendo. As the music fades again to a low burble of arpeggios, the Master’s hand withdraws and he pads away to the pile of broken chairs. There is an almost musical clinking of wood on wood as he selects one with four legs and most of a back.

“I see you’ve been waltzing without me,” he observes, returning with the chosen chair.

“Oh yes,” the Doctor agrees, “Martha’s, really, very good. Nice roundhouse — I think she must’ve taken kickboxing at university.”

“So, she’s setting down?” the Master asks smoothly.

“Like you care,” the Doctor laughs, and then inhales deeply, eyes shutting of their own accord, as Ludwig Beethoven’s melody is suddenly accompanied by a single, sustained note of almost unbearable sweetness. The note dips and splits and intertwines with itself around the original chords.

“Cheater,” the Doctor murmurs, without opening his eyes. “My instrument only resonates in this dimension.”

“Surely, my dear Doctor, it’s what you do with it that counts,” the Master says, with great amusement.

The Doctor laughs throatily. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“I apologise. Atrocious puns are, traditionally, your area of expertise,” the Master concedes.

“Oh - didn’t know I had one,” the Doctor returns, reaching the end of the movement and exchanging Beethoven’s sonata for the Beatles and ‘Penny Lane’, just to see what the Master will do.

There’s barely a bump in the smooth, clear tones of the Celestial Harp, despite the piano’s rapid key change: the former melody twisting elegantly into something newer and lighter.

The Doctor eyes the Master across the piano’s shiny top. Despite the broken chair-back, he has managed to lounge: radiating confidence and smugness, the little silver harp resting on the palm of his left hand as the fingers of his right flit over its surface.

It’s difficult to think quickly with the Celestial Harp tugging at his emotional nerve centres, but the Doctor pushes ‘Penny Lane’ into a little ditty he helped Mozart with. The Master follows him. The Doctor switches to early Modern, Romantic, New Romantics, from the Major General’s song to ‘Three Blind Mice’, and the Master takes each new tune and weaves it, effortlessly, into the others: his grin growing wider with each failed attempt to wrong-foot him.

The Doctor crooks an eyebrow and resorts, at last, to cheap tricks: songs he knows the Master hates - ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancing’, ‘Oklahoma’, swing music.

Finally, then, as the familiar jaunty notes of Glenn Miller’s greatest hit ring out in the Grand Ballroom, the Master withdraws his hand from the harp. The Doctor grins. The Master shakes his head, pityingly. The Doctor laughs and keeps playing.

“In the mood,” he sings, as the chorus rolls around. “That’s it, I’ve got it.”

“No,” the Master says. “Don’t sing.”

“In the mood,” the Doctor continues, grinning. “Your ear will spot it. In the mood. Oh, what a hot hit-”

He pulls his fingers away moments before the Master closes the piano lid with a snap and a disharmonious crunch of keys.

“I win,” he says. The Master is now sitting on the lid, presumably to prevent its being opened again, and the Doctor laughs and strokes his lover’s leg. “Very good effort, though.”

“I wasn’t aware we were competing.”

The Doctor snorts. “Of course you were.” He tilts his chin up towards the Master, but the idiot is still sulking and so he treats this invitation like a challenge. He raises a single, elegant eyebrow, but otherwise reminds unmoved.

With an exaggerated sigh, the Doctor pushes himself up from the hand on the Master’s leg and leans into him. _“Loser,”_ he says, as the Master accepts the kiss.

“I don’t recall mocking you at any of my victories.”

 _“Liar,”_ the Doctor says, with another kiss.

“I see you found my résumé.”

“I love you,” the Doctor says, for the first time in three-quarters of a millennium, because he’s drunk and it seems appropriate.

The Master feigns great boredom. “I know.”

“ _Oh,_ ” the Doctor laughs, “ _Master._ A Star Wars reference. Now, _this_ is a perfect moment.”

  
13\. _‘Every day presents a new challenge to one's dignity.’_

The kitchen smells of an unpleasant mixture of ash, overcooked meat and furniture polish. The chair he’s sitting on has a back with six rungs, all of which are digging into his back. The flagstone floor is remarkably clean, save for a solitary footprint by the inner door where a boy, judging by the size of the foot, stepped on the stone before it was dry. And Martha Jones is slightly shorter in real life than she appears in the TARDIS security footage and the souvenir photographs the Doctor brings back occasionally to bait him.

All these impressions, the Master catalogues and files away as he listens to the maids talk. His uncomfortable chair is by the open, external door and occasionally a light breeze flickers over his face: he notes the now unfamiliar feeling of it with something approaching glee. There are rooms in the TARDIS with artificial atmospheres, but, in general, the air is still. Stepping outside TARDIS this morning was like being released from stasis. Time had stopped inside that blue box and now it is running away with itself, picking up speed with each hour, minute, second of the Master’s freedom.

It had been a whim.

The Doctor has been gone for a fortnight. This is not unusual - sometimes he vanishes for whole months - but this particular disappearance had been planned and timed. The Doctor had left the Master a recording, explaining his revolting plan to take human physiology for three months, and another recording for Martha Jones, which the Master hacked into, early into the first day, for something to do.

Strangely, without the ever-present expectation of the Doctor’s return, the TARDIS has begun to feel less like a home he shares with the Doctor and more like a place the Doctor has put him for safe keeping.

He’d tried to leave on the night of his activation, immediately, as a matter of principal. When that had proved impossible, the Master had reassessed his options and returned to the Doctor to accept the man’s terms. He has, by and large, abided by them, including the most important one of all: that he never try to make his escape. Since that time, there has been a single, surprising excursion outside, during which the Doctor watched him like a hawk. At no other time, though, has the Master so much as considered leaving the TARDIS.

On impulse today, he lifted the snub, twisted the lock and found the main doors opening before him onto an expanse of English countryside. There was no sudden incapacitating electric shock, no sudden headache. The Master held a hand outside the TARDIS and then drew it back. Nothing happened.

_“Interesting.”_

“You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas,” a voice from the TARDIS said, in a very poor impression of Glinda, the good witch. The Master turned and found the hologram leaning against the console. The pre-recorded Doctor grinned. “You just had to find it for yourself. _Well,”_ he amended, switching back to his own voice, “I say always — you’ve actually been able to leave since Christmas 2005. We went outside and then I…” he feigned interest in the ceiling, _“didn’t_ turn the TARDIS’s security systems back on when we got back. So… basically… you’ve been able to leave since then. How long’s that been now?” He looked straight at the Master, raised an eyebrow, a smug smile tugging his mouth askew. “A year?”

“Eighteen months,” the Master murmured.

“Well?” the Doctor’s image said, with a smile and gesture towards the still open door, _“Go on,_ then. Just,“ he frowned, head titled to one side, “don't - murder anyone, will you? Or try to take over wherever this is. In fact, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Wait, no, hold on. Don’t do anything _Martha_ wouldn’t do. Actually - No, sorry, she’s a bit reckless: probably why I like her. Don’t do anything that-”

 _“Off,”_ the Master said, firmly. The TARDIS, trained by now to respond to his vocal commands, cancelled the image and the Doctor vanished mid-sentence.

As he climbed the steps to the wardrobe gallery, the Master considered the possibility that he was about to walk into one of the Doctor’s traps and found it to be unlikely. Meanwhile, the possibility of freedom tugged at him. Carefully, he selected a plain, dark wool suit that would not look out of place in pre-War Britain from the racks of clothes and descended the spiral staircase.

The Doctor’s hologram had somehow managed to turn itself back on in the time he had taken to change and it grinned and said, ‘Remember, close your eyes, click your-’

“Off,” the Master said again and walked outside the Doctor’s TARDIS for the first time in eighteen months.

He has gained access to the school kitchens through humiliating, but practical means. Namely, by waylaying a passer-by from the thriving middle-classes and bribing him to make a visit to the Doctor’s school, under the pretence that he has a small son he wishes to enrol there.

The Master is currently posing as the disreputable Mister Neeson’s manservant. Ordinarily, of course, he would have acted the wealthy father himself, but he has no interest in the school or even what the Doctor has become here. It is Martha Jones — faithfully keeping watch over him — whom the Master has come to see.

Aside from her height, she has lived up to most of his expectations. In other words, he finds her slightly boring. Despite the degrading experience she must be enduring here, she seems determined to be cheerful and sociable. She’s clearly kind, because she offered the Master tea as soon as he arrived in the kitchen, and out-spoken, because when he lied and told her the tea — clearly brewed with pre-used leaves — was delicious, she laughed and said, “yer, right.”

She is also discrete. When questioned, the Master announced that his name was “John Smith”; Martha Jones said nothing. It was a different girl who crowed, “Another John Smith, eh, Martha? Well, I just hope he’s not as much trouble as the last one,” and laughed uproariously.

This was the reaction the Master had hoped to provoke with his choice of pseudonym, though he had expected some comment from Miss Jones. He assured the other girl, Jenny Turner that he, at least, was no trouble, indeed could not afford to make trouble in his current position — sadly, the truth — and that he had never before met the other John Smith and was, therefore, unlikely to pass on any stories she might tell him.

Miss Turner had needed little encouragement and, despite her friend’s numerous and valiant attempts to change the subject, the Master is currently being treated to a potted history of the Doctor’s recent exploits. Apparently, the man has been found sleep-walking without any trousers on no less than _three_ occasions. The other maids chip in: Mister Smith has, despite being a teacher of history, taken over the science department for his experimenting; has been seen buying silk stockings in town, though he doesn’t have a sweetheart as far as anybody knows, and “worst of all,” Jenny says, “he’s a vegetarian!”

At this, even faithful Miss Jones joins in with the general laughter, until a familiar voice from the kitchen door says, “Martha?”

Immediately, the maids resume their assigned tasks, sliding grins at each other and the Master, complicit in their joke, as Martha pulls away from them, back to her rightful place.

“Martha?” the oh, so familiar voice says, again. “Ah, Martha, there you are. Yes, I’ve been looking for the waistcoat that belongs with this suit. You haven’t tidied it away somewhere, have you? I was planning to wear it to the Headmaster’s supper tonight, but I can’t for the life of me locate the blasted thing.”

The Master looks up and there, in the doorway, is a man who looks almost exactly like the Doctor’s most recent regeneration. There are the Doctor’s eyes, the Doctor’s nose, the Doctor’s freckles across the Doctor’s thin cheek bones. He even has the Doctor’s anachronistically gelled hair: the Doctor’s long fringe wobbles in front of the Doctor’s forehead with John Smith’s agitation for his missing waistcoat.

“You spilled ink on it last week, sir,” Martha says kindly. She retrieves the garment from where it has been drying in front of the fireplace. “I was about to bring it to you.”

“Ah, splendid,” John Smith says, taking the waistcoat from her with a quick wide smile that is not one of the Doctor’s. “Thank you.” He looks up, but the Master — with faster reflexes than this human copy — manages to look down at his cup of vile tea before he can be caught staring. He sips the tea, then looks up to meet the Doctor’s eyes. Slowly, he smiles — the predatory smile he used to use on the Doctor’s more nervous incarnations — to cover his own horror.

John Smith stares at him for a long moment, and then his eyes flick guiltily back to Martha. “Right. Yes, thank you, I’d better be off… Classes to teach. Keep up the good work.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know him,” Martha says to the Master, once John Smith has gone.

“I’m afraid, my dear, that I don’t,” the Master says.

“Well, he knew you.”

“Then he must have seen me with Mister Neeson at a social event,” the Master says smoothly. They both know this is impossible, as the Doctor arrived in 1913 a mere two weeks ago and has been unlikely to attend any large social functions in that time, but only the Master is certain they both know this.

Martha gives him another suspicious look and, for a moment, the Master thinks she is about to do something interesting, like challenge him. But, lamentably, she is called away to another menial task unequal to her talents, before she can ask any more questions.

The Master stays long enough to tip a fairly potent diuretic of his own invention into each of the vats of stew simmering on the hob, and then makes good his escape, leaving Mister Neeson to fend for himself.

He returns to the TARDIS and closes the door behind him before he realises what it is he has done.

1913 is extremely dull and, by the time it becomes 1914, it will become extremely dangerous. But it would be somewhere else.

On the other hand, the Master reasons, the door is still unlocked. There are still two months until the Doctor regains himself and could feasibly begin pursuit. There is still time to change his mind. He could still-

He shudders and, rather than think about it, goes to change out of the coarse fabrics of pre-War Britain into his own silks.

By the time the Doctor returns — earlier than expected, but still intolerably late by any reasonable person’s standards — the Master has considered his escape approximately 20,556 times. He knows exactly how it could be done. There is a cache of alien technology in Scotland. If he commandeered a vehicle he could be there within six hours. Then, presumably, he would find something with teleportation or time travel capacity that could be employed to take him somewhere more genial. It would be easy.

But, despite the Master’s 20,556 (approximately) escape considerations, he is simply reading in bed when the Doctor strides in, pulling apart the bowtie at his neck.

“Not now,” the Doctor says quietly, when the Master looks up at him. He changes quickly into his own clothes and leaves again.

Three hours later he returns and climbs into bed, still fully clothed, and rests his head on the Master’s nearest leg. The Master puts his book down on the bedside table - he has been re-reading it, anyway - and looks down at the frowning Doctor in his lap.

“God, I’m so _stupid_ ,” the Doctor hisses eventually. “It was all my fault. All of it.”

“Almost certainly,” the Master agrees. He considers stroking the Doctor’s distraught hair, but opts, instead, for his neck, which, at least, has respectable sexual overtones.

“ _Becoming human?_ ” the Doctor continues. “What sort of a plan was that?” He gestures his disgust against the sheets. “Why didn’t anyone stop me? Master - why didn’t you stop me?”

“You neglected to share your plan with me until the deed was done.”

“Really?” the Doctor says. “Well,” he nods, “ _that_ ,” he laughs sourly, “just shows how thick I am. Thick and dangerous. From now on, I’m telling you everything, Master, whether you like it or not. Maybe that way I can avoid killing anyone else.” He growls and rubs his face hard with his hands.

“Do you want to tell me what happened this time?”

“…No,” the Doctor says, muffled through his hands. He removes them and sighs. “Whatever you don’t know already, you can find out easily enough. Don’t — look in any mirrors for a while, though.”

The Master’s hand stills.

There is a room in the Doctor’s ship full of things he has confiscated from the kind of people who might use them. In his time aboard the police box, the Master has managed to locate no fewer than fifteen (deactivated) models of his own Tissue Compression Eliminator amongst the piles of dangerous and illegal equipment. The Refractory Displacement Insulator has been outlawed in all civilised systems for millennia, making the revelation that the Doctor knows how to use one, only slightly less surprising than the revelation that he has.

“My dear Doctor,” the Master says, resuming his caress, “you make the mistake of assuming I’m at all interested in what you got up to whilst you were pretending to be a human.”

“Right,” the Doctor says.

“I asked merely to prevent any stories about that disgusting affair.”

“Good,” the Doctor says.

There is a brief silence and then the Doctor says, “Talking of disgusting, there was, Master, a night, quite soon after I arrived, on which practically everyone in the school got diarrhoea. Horrible. Down to some dodgy stew, apparently. Everyone at once. Unbelievable.”

“ _Doctor-_ “

“Everyone who’d eaten the stew, that is,” the Doctor says, beginning to relax at last. “The people who hadn't eaten it were all right and, for some mad reason, I had- or rather John Smith had- insisted I was a vegetarian...”

The Master sighs inwardly. Ah, yes, of course. They’d actually told him: sleep walks without his trousers, purchases stockings for suspicious purposes and, worst of all, he’s a vegetarian.

The Doctor wrinkles his nose thoughtfully. “Very odd. I must have been channelling my sixth incarnation — maybe my seventh,” he says. “Anyway, _I_ didn’t eat the stew, so I was fine. And so were about four or five boys who’d been in detention. Oh, and Martha was serving, so Martha was fine, too.” He pauses and stares out in the room over the Master’s lap. “Sorry, I don’t know why I brought that up.”

In the break that follows, the Master allows himself to hope that the Doctor’s memory of him sitting in the kitchen is merely subliminal. Then, he realises that, below his hand, the Doctor’s shoulders are shaking with laughter.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” the Doctor says, catching hold of the Master’s sleeve as he attempts to extract himself. Still sniggering, he sits up and makes an attempt to school his expression. “Look, I’m serious, I promise. I won’t laugh any more. Come back.”

With an attempt at dignity, the Master sits back on the bed. The Doctor leans forward and the Master, having enclosed the Doctor’s face between two hands, pulls him into a long overdue kiss. After avoiding meat and his usual dental routine for the best part of three months, the Doctor tastes distinctly different and there is that hint of human saliva the Master had hoped never to encounter again in his mouth. That must belong to John Smith though, the Master decides, as he pushes the Doctor back onto the bed, and it’s hardly a stretch to think of a quick solution to the problem of the Doctor’s mouth. He has always been very good at fellatio, when he can be bothered.

But even as the Master considers the multitudinous merits of this plan, he realises the trembling in the Doctor’s body is amusement, rather than arousal. Then the Doctor turns his head out of the kiss, gasping for breath in between heaves of laughter. The Master manages to discern, “ _Called yourself - John Smith,_ ” as the particular cause of the Doctor’s mirth, which is the last straw.

Despite the Doctor’s attempts to detain him, he stands. “I should have left while I had the chance,” he mutters on his way out, loudly enough for the Doctor to hear.

“Oh, the door’s still unlocked,” the Doctor says, as the Master pulls the internal door to the corridor open. He glances back and finds the Doctor smirking as he loosens his tie. “I’ll even drop you back in 1913, if you want. _Or_ ,” he says, when the Master favours him with a particularly withering look, “I could apologise for laughing at you — a lot — sorry, it was very funny, though; thank you for only trying poison the human-me a bit, and then we could have some sort of kinky reunion sex.” He quirks an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

“I hope,” the Master says, after a short pause, “that is a very good apology,” and he shuts the door without walking through it.

  
14\. _‘You’ve reached the good ship TARDIS.’_

Extract from John Smith’s _Journal of Impossible Things._

… I completed my project almost four months later. Every hair, every memory was in its proper place. All that remained was to give him the spark of animation and the man I had known would truly live again.

This point had given me some cause for reflection during my labours. Aside from the moral issues attached to the creation of a ‘life’ that would, from its first ‘breath’, be bound to me, there were those of a more personal nature. The man I had known was intelligent and engaging, and had proved, in the past, to be an excellent friend and— _companion_ to me. I had high hopes of him proving so again. He was, also, power-hungry and ruthless and held a dangerous disrespect for all life, including, on occasion, my own. Did I have the right to release such a man on the universe again?

During his construction, I had installed several inhibitors, each intended, in some way, to keep him on board the ship. Even the Master, brilliant as he was and might be again, would have trouble breaking through my protections. At least — while I was alive. Like this, I knew, he would out live me. What might happen then was not pleasant to think on.

All these points and hundreds more I had argued with myself over the last four months: taking both parts until I was equally convinced of each side. In the end, I believe it may well have been this that decided me. At least with the Master alive again, I would have someone to argue against. I might know myself again.

With the hope that I was not behaving more foolishly than I already believed myself to be, I began the process that would set his systems working independently of the ship, and stepped back.

At first, there seemed to be no change. Then his chest began to rise and fall gently, and the hand closest to me twitched, his mouth parted. Suddenly, he seemed more like a man awakening from a long sleep than a machine I had constructed and filled with the borrowed memories of my former enemy.

With a thought for my friend, Mary, I remarked, _“It’s alive,”_ but too quietly for the Master to hear.

His eyes opened: the fluttering motions of his eyelashes as organic as anything in nature.

Louder than before, I asked, “How’re you feeling?”

There was a brief pause, in which his new brain processed the information I’d given it and the question I’d asked.

“Surprised,” the Master said eventually. He did not immediately sit up, as I had expected, but lay still — staring at the coral lined ceiling. “As I remember it, I should be standing next to the centre console of the Doctor’s ship, opposite the Doctor. I find I am not.”

“You’re lying down: apart from that, you're right. This is the Doctor’s ship. This is the Doctor talking — hello.”

“I don’t recognise your voice,” the Master said, after another moment’s thought. “So, you regenerated.”

“Yer. Sorry. I know you liked the last one.”

“In the time I was unconscious.”

“No.”

“Ah,” the Master said and the sound was much like a sigh. “Tell me, Doctor: why can’t I sense you? Or, for that matter, any of our race?”

“You died,” I told him. “So did everyone else. I’m the only one left. Or I was. My ship had a snapshot of your mind and, after the War, I built you a new body and downloaded that snapshot into it. Clever, huh?”

“And why would you do that?”

“Well, the War was over. There wasn’t much to do.”

“And I was your pet project.”

“If you like.”

“I see.”

Up until this point, the Master had avoided all but the most necessary or involuntary movements. Now I saw him one his hands to his face and slowly rub his eyes with the balls of thumb and forefinger. It had always been an affected gesture and I saw it here for what it was: a wordless expression of weariness with my stupidity.

“Well,” the Master said, hand still held in this familiar aspect, “thank you for appraising me of the situation, Doctor. Now that you have done so, I would appreciate it if you would turn me back off.”

I had expected this. “You don’t want me to turn you off,” I told him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You were willing to live on as an ectoplasmic snake,” I pointed out. “You’re telling me you’d rather be a snake-thing than live in a mechanical body that’s actually stronger and faster than lots of your old bodies? Sorry - I don’t believe you. You’re just being stubborn.”

“ _Stubborn?_ ” the Master repeated.

“Stubborn.”

“Very well,” the Master said slowly. “Assuming I am being merely stubborn, and that, really, I intend to accept your offer, what are the conditions of my new existence? Can I leave the ship?”

“No.”

“Will there, then, be opportunities for intergalactic conquest inside the ship?”

“No. Not unless you want to play Risk,” I said, naming an Earth game popular from the 1960s.

At this, the Master stood and, with a fluid grace that surpassed anything he had exhibited in life, crossed the room. “You see, Doctor,” he said, stopping less than a yard away from me, “I believe this is my problem with your proposition. Correct me if I’m wrong, but what you’ve offered me appears to be a literal eternity imprisoned with you, forced to play board games and make polite conversation with your guests.”

“You like Risk,” I pointed out. The Master grabbed the collar of my jumper, which tore in his grip. I glanced briefly down at the damage, sighed, but continued as if this had not occurred. “And there won’t be any guests. It’ll just be the two of us.” He seemed unconvinced, so I added, “Don’t want you killing them, do we?”

Gently, I prized his fingers away from my torn jumper. “Try it for a week. If, at the end of that, you’d rather be dead, I’ll turn you off. Scout’s honour. Not before, though, Master. So get used to it.”

He stalked off into the ship, but I knew I had him. He would, I supposed, use this week first to try the strength of the blocks I’d placed in his mind and then the strength of his body and the capacity of his mind. He would find, as he had always done before, that a form of life was better than no life at all, and this one vastly preferable to many he had endured before.

I did not expect to see him before the seven days were up, I thought him too proud. So it was with surprise that I awoke that night to find myself cuffed to the headboard of my bed. The uncomfortable position of my arms must have disturbed my sleep. I turned my head and found the Master reclining on Victoria’s longue, and regarding me with some amusement.

“That’s funny,” I told him. “I thought I’d locked the door.”

“The ship let me in,” the Master replied. “I appear to have a new affinity with the mechanical, which more than makes up for the lack of telepathic empathy.” He held up his hand, presumably marvelling at its construction: the wholly artificial movement. “I believe I may well prove more adept than I was in any of my lives. I suppose I ought to thank you for that, Doctor.”

“Go ahead. I’m not going anywhere.”

The Master chuckled, but, if he felt any gratitude, kept it to himself.

In the silence, I flexed my hands. Some years ago, the master escapist, Houdini had taught me the various tricks of his profession. However, it seemed these skills were hardly necessary: the cuffs were not even tight around my wrists.

“You know I could escape if I wanted to,” I told the Master. “Easily.”

The Master’s teeth gleamed in the darkness. “So could I,” he said. “However,” he rose and moved towards the bed on which I was still restrained, “for the moment, I am content to stay.”…

  
15\. _‘I pride myself that I am the dearest companion of the owner of this craft.’_

The Master is swimming lengths when the TARDIS lurches suddenly into the vortex. A substantial amount of water slops over the rim of the pool and the Master finds himself tugged under the surface. Fortunately, his mechanical body is quite capable of dealing with the current and the oxygen deprivation: he swims the rest of the length under water.

There has been no warning of a departure, but there rarely is. The Doctor appeared about an hour ago to collect some parts and let the Master know some brilliant old professor has designed a working gravity pulse from gluten extract and bendy plastic straws, that the two of them are saving the human race from the end of the universe and, oh, that Jack Harkness is back, actually _held on to the side of the TARDIS_ all the way through the vortex, the man’s incredible. The Doctor has a limited attention span, even without distractions as numerous as these, and the Master has tired of reprimanding him for it. He gives Miss Jones and the newly returned Captain Harkness time to disperse and hoists himself out of the pool.

Sadly, the pile of clothes he left neatly folded on one of the reclining chairs an hour ago is now spotted with damp patches, but, for the sake of form, the Master discards his swimming trunks and pulls his trousers on. Neither he, nor the Doctor have ever been entirely comfortable with nudity, both opt for multiple layers and, in the Master’s case, high collars in their everyday lives. Making love is different, because they’re both prepared and distracted. Should the Doctor finds him wandering the corridors naked, he will make some sort of lewd remark on instinct, but it will be uncomfortable for both of them. At any rate, the trousers — at the bottom of the pile — have fared better than the rest of his clothes, and are, at worst, only quite damp: the discomfort minimal.

The console room is on the way back to the bedroom. As the Master passes, towelling his hair dry, he hears the sound of swing music being hummed jauntily, sighs and pulls open the connecting door from the corridor.

"I see you’ve regenerated,” he says, at the sight of an unfamiliar man thumping the console enthusiastically with the size three mallet. “Again.”

The new Doctor looks up, his lips a static O of surprise. “Er,” he says.

The Master tuts, throws the wet towel to one side and joins him at the console. “Newly regenerated and already abusing the TARDIS.” He frowns, pushes some debris out of the way and twists the major flux capacitors, which are all unresponsive. “Oh, my poor dear,” he murmurs, stroking the TARDIS in between controls with one hand, as the other flicks through the maintenance switches. “What has the nasty man done to you this time?”

“Nothing it didn’t deserve,” the Doctor says. “The co-ordinates are locked. I’ve managed to push them back a year and-”

“What possessed you to lock the co-ordinates?” the Master asks, incredulously, pushing the Doctor gently away.

“ _I_ didn’t.”

The Master raises an eyebrow. “So, somebody else activated the TARDIS by remote control. How extremely interesting. I was under the impression that we’d blocked that.”

He looks curiously up at the other man, who is standing with his hands on his waist, one eyebrow cocked. “What happened on that planet?” the Master asks. “Last time we spoke, you were playing saviour of mankind with Captain Harkness. Now, we appear to be running away from someone with a better control of the TARDIS than either of us. That alone is worrying, but you also appear to have lost the captain, Miss Jones, your life and your suit. On that note, my dear Doctor, I might ask why you’re dressed like-“ white shirt, burgundy waistcoat, long necktie: a wholesome parody of his own clothes.

“Oh holy Rassilon,” the Master says, “it’s you.”

“At _last_ ”, the other Master says, accompanying it with three ironic claps, that end as the Time Rotor comes to a gentle stop. “You seem surprised to see me,” he continues, as the Master stares at him. “Surprised and not pleased. Though not,” he says, “half as surprised and not-pleased as I am to see _you_. Without a shirt,” he adds, darkly. He crosses his arms. “What are you doing here? I think I would have remembered if I’d taken a break in running for my life to bang the Doctor.”

“You must be from an alternate dimension,” the Master says smoothly. His lip curls into a sneer. “One in which I apparently use the word _bang_ to describe sexual intercourse.”

His other self grins. “Nice try,” he says, and the grin vanishes instantly. “But you’re not a Time Lord.” He taps his head. “I can’t feel you in here.”

“Perhaps you damaged your brain in the regeneration process,” the Master suggests. “It certainly seems that way. A loss of telepathic ability, amnesia- no wonder I mistook you for the Doctor. That is usually-”

“ _Not_ a Time Lord,” the other Master interrupts, circling him. “So what are you? You look a lot like me. But you’re not me. Not human, so-” his eyes flare. “ _Mechanical_ ,” he hisses. “That little shit. He built himself a version of me to keep as a pet.”

The Master laughs, though the electrical processes that make up his brain are working in overdrive. “I’m hardly a pet.”

“No?” the other Master says. “What are you then? Guard dog? Assistant? Fuck toy? What? Sorry, I’m just not getting it.”

The Master smiles slowly.

His other self smiles too, but it’s hollow and dangerous. “I see,” he says, crossing to the other side of the console.

The Master’s robotic eyes follow him. He knows already that he will have to kill the other Master, but this scarcely poses a problem. Newly regenerated, his counterpart has a certain reckless energy, true — but his body is still flesh and blood. The Master estimates he is at least twice as strong as the other Master, and at least as fast. As for the moral issue, he feels no compunction about murdering this vulgar doppelganger. He has never been overly fond of himself and any meetings with past or future incarnations have been conducted civilly only in the knowledge that to do otherwise would be to invoke a major universe-shattering paradox. As the new Master was so quick to point out, however, they are no longer the same person. No paradox.

Killing him will be easy: hiding it from the Doctor will be harder, but perfectly possible. In addition, with the unsavoury business over, the Doctor is likely to be more appreciative of the Master he has, having dealt, however, briefly with what he could have become.

“May I ask what you’ve done with the Doctor?” he asks his other self.

“Trapped him at the end of the universe,” the other Master says, looking up with a thin smile. “With whatshisname and whatshername.”

“Captain Jack Harkness, Martha Jones,” the Master supplies, circling the console.

“Ah yes,” his counterpart says, moving away from him. “I can never keep track of them. But then it’s just one pretty face after another with the Doctor, isn’t it? Is he shagging them, too?”

“Just me,” the Master says, with a feral smile.

“The Doctor’s always had appalling taste.”

The Master chuckles. “I wouldn’t crow too loudly, my dear alternate self. You may be a Time Lord, but you’re a Time Lord who has just spent the last fifty years of his life as a _human_. That is what happened, isn’t it? That was my plan. I assume you were the darling old professor the Doctor was so taken with. _Clever_ , the Doctor said. _For a human._ Can you still remember what it was like to be so close to him, to work with him only while he thought you were someone else? Can you, I wonder, still smell the human sweat in your clothes? Still taste that sourness in your mouth?”

The other Master laughs with him. “Oh, you are so right,” he says, moving to the other side of the Time Rotor. “So right. The human-experience was disgusting and demeaning - don’t take your kids, not that you have any or could have any. But the funny thing is,” he says, “I don’t remember anybody being able to turn me on and off when I was a human.” He holds up what is clearly the remote control that controls the Master’s most basic functions: _on, off_ , and looks at it, as if surprised. “Oh! What could this be, I wonder?”

“That would be the TARDIS’s fast return remote,” the Master says, as he tries to fathom how even the Doctor could have been so stupid and so trusting as to leave that remote behind where any passing psychopath could stumble across it. Presumably that was the idea, and he was supposed to be flattered. Absurdly, the Master finds he is, despite everything. “Press that and, I’m afraid, we’ll be sent straight back to the Doctor and your little joy ride will end as abruptly as it started.”

The other Master affects a look of great fear and indecision, he bites his fingernails— then he stops. “No,” he says. “Sorry. I just don’t believe you.” And he presses the remote.

It feels as though no time has passed: suddenly he just isn’t there any more. The Master turns to look for his counterpart— or rather, attempts to turn.

“Don’t bother trying to move,” the real Master says from somewhere just out of sight. “I’ve locked all your functions, except,” and the Master can hear a soft click as he ticks them off on his fingers, “optical, verbal, aural, physical sensation.”

“So, I can still communicate,” the Master says - and he can, though everything above his nose is as immobile as his body, “and I can still feel pain. How thoughtful of you,” he says dryly.

“I know how much I like to talk,” the real Master says, “how much I like pain.” He strolls into the Master’s view and regards him thoughtfully through slit eyes. In however long it has been since he pressed the remote, he has changed from his human clothes and into a well-cut black suit. There is a ring on his left hand, and a metal glove with long pointed claws on his right. He flexes his fingers and frowns with the exaggeration the Master has come to expect from him. “Why d’you think the Doctor had _this?_ ”

The Master rolls his eyes— or tries to. “I assume you’re planning to kill me.”

“Kill you?” the real Master asks, looking up from the manipulation of his metal-cased fingers. “No. Damage, deactivate and otherwise destroy you? Yes. Technically, you were never alive, so, you see, I can’t really _kill_ you, can I?” He walks forward. “I assume you were planning to kill me.”

“Of course.”

"That’s something, at least, then," the real Master says. "I was beginning to think you’d been completely brainwashed by this,” he makes quote marks with his hands: the long pale Time Lord hand, and the metal claw, “ _domestic bliss._ But there’s still a spark of me buried deep down in there, after all.”

“I do hope not.”

The real Master smiles. “You know,” he says, resting his hands on the Master’s shoulders: warm and cold, “I think I have to thank you. It’s going to be so easy to defeat the Doctor this time. He doesn’t know me any more. He’ll think he’s dealing with you, his little robotic pet.” The real Master lowers his voice. _“He won’t know what’s hit him,”_ he hisses.

And the Master starts laughing: his signature chuckle that in all likelihood this puny usurper will never be able to manage, just as he has failed to regenerate with a respectable beard.

“What?” the real Master says. “What’s so funny?”

“It won’t matter,” the Master says.

“ _What_ wont matter?”

“Anything,” the Master says. “He’ll be thinking of me. Whether you win or lose, and you will lose, incidentally, you always do — when you lose, when he looks at you, when he forgives you, he’ll be thinking of me.”

It’s not true, but, of course, that doesn’t matter to either of them. The Master keeps laughing as his other self rips through his synthetic skin with the metal claw, into the place his hearts aren’t.

*

  
Epilogue. _‘…a last chance for salvation.’_

The year has been rewound.

“You still haven’t answered the question,” the Master says. “What happens to me?”

“You’re my responsibility from now on,” the Doctor tells him. “The only Time Lord left in existence.”

“Yer, but you can’t trust him,” insists ever-loyal Jack.

“No,” the Doctor says, though he has and will do again. “The only safe place for him is in the TARDIS.”

“You mean, you’re just going to - _keep_ me?” the Master asks, flatly disgusted, but still unwilling - as he has been all year - to refer to the obvious issue.

“Mmm,” the Doctor says. “If that’s what I have to do.” He turns to Jack, because, for a moment, he can’t look at the Master. “It’s time to change. Maybe I’ve been wandering for too long.” He turns back to the Master, who is scowling at him: always so petulant in his defeat. “Now I’ve got someone to care for.”

He doesn’t see who fires the gun. He just sees the Master crumple and runs forward to catch him. “I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ve got you.” But he hasn’t.

*

“I guess you don’t know me so well,” the Master says. “I refuse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long and in-depth commentary and a podfic (WIP) can be found at the "kept man" tag on my Livejournal, which is where I originally posted this fic. http://aralias.livejournal.com/tag/kept%20man
> 
> If you're interested in 'Scream of the Shalka', you might be interested in Radiosonic's Shalka audio series for which I've written two of the seven episodes. More information can be found here: http://radio-sonic.livejournal.com/ 
> 
> Thanks for reading.


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